


The Sun, Inscribed

by Trixree



Category: One Piece
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Declarations Of Love, Depictions of Abuse, Explicit Sexual Content, Families of Choice, Frottage, Law needs a hug, M/M, Mild Sexual Content, Multi, Romantic Soulmates, Sanji Needs a Hug, Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-15
Updated: 2020-08-23
Packaged: 2021-03-02 18:27:45
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 23,891
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24201313
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Trixree/pseuds/Trixree
Summary: It’s said that soulmate marks are gifts from the gods. Certainly, more than this has been said but, well. Luffy’s never really been one for gods or any of that stuff. Those stories are always so boring and long-winded.
Relationships: Monkey D. Luffy/Roronoa Zoro, Monkey D. Luffy/Roronoa Zoro/Trafalgar D. Water Law/Vinsmoke Sanji, Monkey D. Luffy/Trafalgar D. Water Law, Monkey D. Luffy/Vinsmoke Sanji, Roronoa Zoro/Trafalgar D. Water Law, Roronoa Zoro/Vinsmoke Sanji, Trafalgar D. Water Law/Vinsmoke Sanji
Comments: 108
Kudos: 633





	1. Luffy

It’s said that soulmate marks are gifts from the gods. Certainly, more than this has been said but, well. Luffy’s never really been one for gods or any of that stuff. Those stories are always so  _ boring  _ and long-winded. 

But he always listens to Shanks’ stories. 

His crew are all in various states of intoxication when Luffy comes wandering into Makino’s bar. Shanks himself is lounging at a table in the very back corner, smiling drunkenly at the ceiling and listening to the raucous laughter of his crew. When Luffy climbs into the man’s lap, Shanks is quick to welcome him into the fold of his arms, humming. 

“Hey, Shanks?” 

“Hm?” 

Luffy traces the intricate pattern on Shank’s forearm—the intricate inner workings of a gun etched across his skin in shocking gunmetal silvers and rusty browns. 

“When will mine get colors?” Luffy asks. 

Shanks shifts Luffy to lean mostly against his other arm so that he has a hand free to pull down one of his sleeves, bearing his shoulder. The older pirate tilts his head towards the bar where Makino is scolding a couple men for breaking a mug with their over-enthusiastic dancing. 

The orchid on Shanks’ shoulder matches the brilliant yellow of Makino’s signature headband. 

“When you meet them, kiddo,” Shanks says. His rumbling voice vibrates through his chest and into Luffy’s body. 

“Do you think one of mine belongs to  _ my  _ first-mate?” Luffy asks, returning his attention once again to the intricate gun on Shanks’ arm, belonging to the first-mate of the Red-Haired pirates. 

Shanks laughs a deep belly-laugh. “Knowing you, kid, probably.” 

* * *

There are stories and myths about soulmate marks. Truthfully, there are too many to count. But Shanks’ story is the only one that matters to Luffy; Makino’s blooming-flower smile, Benn Beckman’s barely-there laughter when Shanks does something stupid, the way that Shanks’ eyes go all crinkly in the corners with a smile when he catches the both of them with an arm around their waists...

_ This  _ is  _ soulmate— _ the ease and familiarity of a first-mate at your side and the soft touch of the hands that wait to greet you when you return home. __

* * *

“Three is a lot,” Sabo mutters in his adolescent gap-toothed lisp. 

“Only two more than one,” Ace adds. 

“Yeah, that’s how  _ counting  _ works, genius.” Sabo punctuates this by kicking Ace in the shin. Ace retaliates by rolling his wet towel and snapping it harsh at Sabo’s bare feet. 

Luffy continues to trace the diamond rope-like pattern that extends down his inner arm from his right wrist down to his elbow. He’s slumped over the wooden tub, pruning but unwilling to climb out of the bath just yet, despite how cold the water is getting. Ace and Sabo are a few lengths away, now snapping wet rolled-up towels at each others' bare butts and legs, yelping and yowling like cats the whole while. 

“Three’s not that many,” Luffy concludes, staring at the twisting nautilus shell inked beneath the skin of his stomach. Its epicenter lies at his bellybutton, twisting out with perfect curling geometry and dissolving into rolling waves of ocean water, inked in shades of black and white. 

The mark on his arm is his largest (odd, rope-like texture corded into diamonds, looking like snake skin creeping up the length of his right arm) but the shell is the prettiest with its elegant, natural curve. 

“Maybe they like snake meat!” Luffy pipes up as he heaves himself over the side of the bath. 

His brothers turn to him only briefly, still preoccupied with leaving bruising, stinging marks on each other in vicious revenge.

“It doesn’t look like any snake I know,” Sabo huffs, referring to the mark on Luffy’s arm. 

Before grabbing his towel, Luffy crouches low to examine the third and final mark adorning the top of his foot. A single, dark heart dangles from a string that trails all the way up his ankle. It looks like a piece of jewelry, almost. Ace says this one creeps him out, that he gets an eerie feeling from it. Luffy thinks he’s dumb. 

They’re his soulmates, after all. If they’re gonna be creepy, it’ll only be in a  _ good way.  _

(In a way that befits the future king of the pirates and the people that will stand at his side.)

He can’t  _ wait  _ until he meets his soulmates and his marks bloom into their full, colorful forms. 

“Whatever, Luffy probably  _ needs  _ three soulmates. He’s too much for one person to handle,” Ace grumbles. 

“Oh! True, true,” Sabo admits, looking thoughtful. “But then why do you only have one mark, Ace?” 

_ “HEY!”  _

* * *

From the moment Luffy sees him—beaten, bloody, and tied to a post in the middle of a dusty marine base—he  _ knows.  _ (The snake-skin-esque mark on his arm  _ itches. _ ) The figure of pirate-hunter Roronoa Zoro hangs limp, crucified in the sun. Silhouetted as he is, Luffy can’t make heads or tails out of what the guy looks like. 

_ Doesn’t matter,  _ his most primal brain tells him.  _ Mine.  _

He hops the wall as easy as breathing, waving away Coby’s desperate shrieks of  _ Luffy, please, oh my god—let’s go, c’mon— _

And there he is, right there, and it feels like  _ everything.  _

“Hey,” Luffy breathes. 

Roronoa Zoro grunts. It’s the best sound in the  _ world.  _

“Join my crew,” Luffy says, a filler and a stand-in for  _ I love you, I’ve always loved you, you’re the biggest mark I have and I love you, I love you, I love you—  _

“What?” Roronoa Zoro asks, blinking heat-stroke dazed eyes up at him. The force of it is a tidal wave. (The mark on Luffy’s arm  _ burns. _ )

Luffy swallows, thick and aching. “I’m going to touch you now, okay?” and he does, touches the pirate-hunter right on the wrist where the ropes are digging so deep into his skin that it's almost like they're growing from out of it. He hardly starts to work the knot before the  _ burning  _ grows into a consuming bright-edge of brilliant razor-sharp  _ pain  _ so close to  _ ecstasy  _ they’re practically indistinguishable. 

Zoro  _ gasps  _ and  _ growls,  _ wriggling like a caged animal in the bindings. 

_ I love you, I love you, I love you…  _

“You’re— _ you’re,”  _ Zoro hisses, his eyes barely coherent and his bloody, stone-dry lips breaking around the necessary sounds. 

“Yeah,  _ yeah,”  _ Luffy nods, knocking their foreheads together and squeezing both of his still-bound hands in the tightest grip he can manage. “I’m—” 

Zoro smells like  _ shit.  _ He smells like the worst kind of body-odor and sun-burned skin and like this dusty, awful yard and a bit like blood, too and Luffy can’t get enough of it into his lungs. And he’s laughing, great big peals of gut-deep laughter erupting from his lungs and rabbiting across Zoro’s filthy-dirty skin. Where their foreheads meet, Zoro is pressing back into Luffy with all the force he can muster and Luffy presses right back, a parody of a head-butt or a kiss, laughing straight into his  _ soulmate’s  _ face because what else is there to do? 

“ _ Name,”  _ Zoro growls out, the cloth of his bandanna whisper-rough against Luffy’s face. 

“Monkey D. Luffy,” he giggles, feeling drunk and on fire at the same time. “I’m gonna be king of the pirates.” 

_ Oh,  _ he was wrong. Zoro’s  _ laughter  _ is the best sound in the world. 

“Of course you are. I’m going to be the greatest swordsman in the world,” Zoro tells him and it’s  _ perfect, perfect, perfect…  _ the future greatest swordsman and the future pirate king, pressed as close together as they can get in a dirty yard in the middle of this nobody-Eastblue town, Coby shrieking just a few feet away. 

* * *

Luffy only figures it out when he’s got an arm full of swords and he’s in free fall from out of a topmost window on the marine base— _ it’s not a snake skin pattern. _

Zoro’s soulmark is the hilt of the white sword. 

Luffy should  _ probably  _ be figuring out how he’s gonna make this landing work, but he can’t. His focus is singularly tuned to the intricate white hilt that has bloomed into color on his arm. The interwoven thin leather straps are snow-white where they were once only the color of his skin. They frame pitch-black diamond sections of the sword pommel. Flecks and splatters of vivid red, spilled like wine, are interspersed throughout the design on Luffy’s arm, although the sword in his hand is free from any such marking. 

It’s  _ beautiful.  _

_ I love you, I love you, I love you—  _

Luffy hits the ground with a  _ thud  _ that reverberates through his whole body and sends him bouncing across the ground with a rubbery  _ twang.  _

* * *

They battle, back to back, and something in the universe clicks into place. 

_Oh,_ Luffy thinks as he watches Zoro fight like a wild thing,like a force of nature, like he is the demon they call him. Luffy stares down at the mark on his arm, at the mystery splatters of red against that crisp white. He catches the powerful arc of Zoro's swords out of the corner of his eye. 

In Zoro's mouth is the hilt of the white sword, blood flecked across both it and Zoro's teeth. 

_Oh,_ Luffy thinks, and charges back into the fight. 

_I love you, I love you, I love you..._

* * *

The rice-ball girl’s mom offers the two young men a shower and a hot meal after the fight. Although he’s still swaying a bit on his feet and although he attacked the glass of water offered to him like it was as coveted as the One Piece itself, Zoro nods at the first suggestion of a  _ shower.  _

Luffy’s heart jumps up and into his throat when Zoro  _ takes his hand,  _ tugging him up the indicated stairs and ushering him rather forcefully into the little bathroom. 

As soon as the door is closed, his hands are large and warm (and smelly, still, but Luffy doesn’t  _ really  _ mind) and they’re  _ everywhere— _ cupping his face, squeezing his shoulders, holding his arms, touching his back and chest,  _ touching, touching, touching…  _

—a gasp as he finds it. 

Zoro holds Luffy’s right arm out, tracing each diamond with steady, reverent hands. 

He looks him dead in the eyes and squeezes Luffy’s heart between both hands when he opens his mouth and says, “ _ Captain.”  _

* * *

They shower together, nude bodies pressed close under the spray. It’s not sexual, but not for lack of trying. Luffy is hard and he could probably come like this, just from rubbing up against Zoro— _ his swordsman— _ but Zoro still looks like he’s about to drop at any moment. It doesn’t seem fair to rub off on your soulmate and then not be able to reciprocate after. 

The touching seems to be enough, anyways. 

As soon as Zoro gets his shirt off (re: as soon as Luffy pulls it off so violently that a few seams pop) it becomes immediately clear what mark is  _ his.  _

In the center of Zoro’s chest is a massive golden sun. Swirling white and grey clouds tinged with hints of barely-there pink rest alongside it, some floating behind and some in front of the sun. Below lie curling, dancing waves of a deep, dark blue. Foamy white froth seems to drip from their tips. 

“Fuck,” Zoro whispers, staring at his chest in the mirror. 

“It’s—” Luffy gasps, hands buzzing with the urge to touch. 

“I know,” Zoro breathes, looking shocked and emotional. 

Luffy wraps himself around Zoro, his chest plastered to the other man’s broad back, and places his right hand flat against the center of the mark— _ of his soulmate mark.  _ (It doesn’t escape Luffy’s notice that there, right there in the center of Zoro’s back is  _ the shell,  _ identical to Luffy’s shell-mark even down to its unrealized black-and-white. They  _ share  _ the beautiful nautilus shell and isn’t that  _ incredible?)  _

“ _ Captain,”  _ Zoro exhales. The sound of it goes straight to Luffy’s groin, arousal curling hot and tight in his core. 

“Mine,” Luffy whispers into the skin of Zoro’s throat. 

And there, naked in the shower, the two make another discovery. Not only do they share the  _ shell,  _ but they share the  _ heart,  _ too. The same black-heart dangling from a string sits in the curve of Zoro’s hip. 

“Zoro!” Luffy gasps in excitement, hopping around on one foot to show him the matching mark on his ankle. “Zoro, we have all the same marks! We share  _ two more soulmates.”  _

Zoro gently takes Luffy’s hand and places it flat against the sun in the center of his chest. Nothing is said. They don't need the words to know. _They're going to find them._ They laugh into each other's open mouths as the cooling water rains down on their heads. 

_Ours._


	2. Zoro

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Zoro’s life begins on the streets.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The inspiration for Sanji's soulmate mark (the mark that appears on both Zoro and Luffy to symbolize Sanji) can be found [here](https://fineartamerica.com/featured/tropical-blue-art-nautilus-shell-bleu-2-sharon-cummings-sharon-cummings.html) and [here](https://www.ka-gold-jewelry.com/p-products/nautilus-silver.php)
> 
> (I love the idea of Sanji's spiral eyebrow being a nod to sacred geometry and the golden ratio, okay? I am but a simple bean) 
> 
> Endless thanks to my beta, [starrypier](https://starrypier.tumblr.com/)

Zoro’s life begins on the streets. 

It’s a bit of a problem in his village—lots of kids go unclaimed or even abandoned. Either way, there is a house for these kinds of kids. It’s called Mama Nagao’s, run by the old woman of its namesake, Nagao. She takes in strays, they say. She’ll give you a roof and a bed and food, but you gotta work for it, they say.

She’s a mean old bitch, they say. 

Things are  _ also _ said about the kind of work that you gotta do at Mama Nagao’s. 

(Zoro does  _ not _ want to go to Mama Nagao’s.)

There's the dojo a few towns over. Sometimes they take in stray boys, if they’re promising enough. Teach ‘em the ways of the samurai. Teach ‘em discipline. Teach ‘em to be strong. But Zoro’s not big enough to go to the dojo, yet. 

(The recruiter, a mean-faced man by the name of Shig, takes one look at him and says, “How old are you, boy?” to which Zoro can only shrug. He doesn’t know. The answer is  _ not old enough,  _ apparently.) 

He can wait. 

So, Zoro lives in the in-between places—sets up camp with others like him under bridges, at the edge of the forest, between and behind buildings, inside abandoned homes… 

He’s just biding his time. Waiting for something better to come along. 

For the moment, he shares the Crawlspace with Sho.

Sho’s a bit older than him, but he’s not clear on how much. All Zoro knows is that Sho’s about a head taller than him and has quick fingers—good for stealing food. Sho told Zoro most of what he knows about Mama Nagao’s through tight lips and a sorrowful, angry face.

They discover the Crawlspace together: a little gap under a rich man’s house that’s just tall enough for the two of them to sit comfortably without bumping their heads. The wood planks that kept animals from nesting in the crawlspace were rotted around the back of the house. It was easy enough to shimmy inside. 

Sho teaches Zoro about the marks on his skin. 

* * *

“Means you got people,” the boy explains over a pilfered can of beans. 

“No I don’t,” Zoro reminds him, frowning. Above their heads, the floorboards creak with someone’s passing footsteps. 

“Yah ya’ do,” Sho grumbles. “Not like me. Don’t got any. Here, see—” Sho tugs him around by the shoulder, pushing Zoro’s shirt up to expose the mark that lives on his back. He’s never seen himself. There’s no still bodies of water around the village and no one's gonna let him use their mirror, that’s for sure. Not a mangy little thing like him. But Zoro knows it's there. Just like how he knows that the roads in this town like to move around on him when he's not looking. 

Sho’s cold hands prod lightly at his back. 

“Cut it out,” Zoro snaps, twisting away. 

“Looks like a shell. Like a beach shell, but a spiral. Means that there’s someone out there in the world that belongs to you and likes the ocean.”

“That’s stupid.” 

“‘S not. Means that no matter what, there’s someone out there that cares for ya. Or is gonna care for ya.” Zoro scowls at him but the other boy only shrugs. “Just the way it is.” 

Zoro thinks of the heart on his hip and the sun on his chest and now, the spiral-shell on his back.  _ Means you got people.  _

Three seems like a  _ lot _ of people. 

* * *

“Hey! Hey you, there! Stop!” A woman’s voice howls. A hand reaches out on the busy street and snags Zoro by the upper arm. 

“Leggo’a me!” he shouts, kicking furiously to little avail. He’s carried off the main road easily.

The woman sets him on the ground with a heavy sigh but doesn’t let go of his arm. The grip hurts. Her hair is long and black and stringy, held out of her face by a red bandanna. A cigarette dangles from her mouth. She’s older than most adults but not yet elderly, with lines and wrinkles all over her face, especially around her mouth and eyes. 

“What’s your name, boy?” the woman asks him. 

“Why should I tell you?” Zoro challenges. He tries again and again to pull free from her grip, but she just holds on tighter. He feels especially weak, like this. Stupid and weak. 

“Because I think I’m your mother, boy!” the woman shouts right back. 

_ Means you got people.  _

“... Zoro,” he tells her. 

The woman lets out a little breath. Weak, like a sigh. “Zoro.  _ My  _ Zoro,” she tells him. “I’m your mother.” Then she hugs him and takes him home. 

* * *

Zoro doesn’t ask where she’s been this whole time, or how he came to be just another stray kid on the road. What he does ask is, “why is my hair green?” 

The woman, Roronoa Kasumi, huffs at him from where she’s scrubbing the laundry. “Your father had green hair,” she dismisses. The wet scrub brush she had been using just moments before hits the ground by his feet with a  _ splatting  _ kind of sound. “Be helpful for a change, son.” 

She brings him  _ far  _ more clothes to wash than they even own. It must be the whole  _ village’s  _ laundry, by the look of things. He tells her so. 

Zoro learns that his father had green hair and that Kasumi has a strong slap. 

She catches him on the lips with her open hand. It stings. Rattles his teeth in his head. He recoils, tripping over his own feet. 

“Watch your mouth, you selfish brat. I’m your  _ mother.”  _

* * *

Zoro’s mother gets drunk a lot and smokes a lot and swears at him a lot. She calls him a “fucking idiot” for getting lost on the way back from the market, calls him a “useless shit” when he doesn’t finish the laundry, calls him a “deadweight and a dumbass” when she sends him over to the neighbor’s to chop wood all day. (He can’t bring himself to call her  _ Mom. _ )

When she comes to take him home, the neighbor gives her a fist-full of bills. Zoro doesn’t ask. It’s better not to ask his mom too many questions.

“Boys are only good for working and fighting,” she tells him. "So stop being a selfish little shit and get back to it." 

Zoro guesses this makes sense, ‘cause all he does is work all day, everyday. He works on the never-ending laundry in the mornings and with the neighbor in the afternoons chopping wood. In the evenings, Kasumi sends him on errands or men come over with more jobs to be done—rocks to be shoveled out of roads and floors to be cleaned and windows to be scrubbed and crates to be lifted. 

Money changes hands after each and every job, but never into his own. Always to Kasumi. 

_At_ _least she doesn't hit often_ , Zoro concludes, thinking of Sho's stories about how a belt can score you with marks deep as ravines and how a whip can sting like fire across unprotected skin. (She really only hits him when he's stupid, anyways.)

“Zoro,” she begins one night, her voice uncharacteristically kind. The sickly-sweet sound of it crawls across his skin like squirming bugs. “I need you to do your mother a big favor.” 

All Zoro does is favors. He does the laundry, brings the water in from the well, runs the bath, does the dishes, chops the firewood, does the errands— 

“Zoro, some friends of mine need to stay with us. You understand, don’t you? I’ll need you to sleep out by the shed for your mother, to give our guests space. This house simply isn’t big enough. It would help me so much if you would do that for me, kiddo.” 

For all that her words are spoken kindly, the command that hides behind them isn’t kind at all. 

* * *

It’s summer in the village, but the nights still get cold. Far too cold for the single, threadbare blanket Kasumi produced for Zoro when she asked for this “favor” in the first place. After nearly an hour of shivering that first night, Zoro creeps from the shed to the warm glow of the house. If he can just snag another blanket from the closet without being seen, it will all be worth it. 

Rancorous, drunken voices can be heard bellowing out curses and laughter the closer he gets. One of the adults finishes up a dirty story that sends the rest careening into fits of belly-laughter and hooting. 

“Speaking of bastards,” a man that Zoro does not recognize by voice shouts over the din, “Kasumi, what’s this I hear about you having a kid?” 

Uproarious laughter. Kasumi sounds like a witch, cackling like that. The wind blows harsh and frigid, urging Zoro to creep closer to the back door.

“Oh, that’s a good one,” Kasumi responds. “I didn’t take you for the  _ gullible _ type.”

Zoro freezes. 

_ Gullible?  _ He doesn't know that word. Maybe he is just as stupid as Kasumi likes to say. 

“Aye? Well whose is he, then?”A different voice jeers. The question doesn't make sense to Zoro. “‘Cause word around town is that you have a son ‘at-you’ve been rentin’ around for a hard day’s labor. And I ‘ear he makes quite the pretty penny.” 

There’s the dull, unmistakable thud of an empty bottle of liquor hitting a table top. 

“He’s not  _ mine.  _ Could you imagine—me, a  _ mother? Feh!”  _ Kasumi cackles. Each wave of laughter rolls through Zoro’s body like thunder. “I’m simply doing the community a  _ favor.  _ So many street-brats these days… running around like animals, eating garbage and spreading stink and damage all over the town. Let me tell you a secret." Her voice drops low and clever. So smug it's dripping with it, even through the walls. 

“When a boy is hungry enough and lonely enough and dumb enough, he’ll believe anything you tell him. All I had to do was say ‘I’m your mother’ and suddenly, I’m turning a profit for the first time in three years!”

There must be sounds escaping Zoro’s mouth (little wounded things, like an injured animal) but they are lost to the rolling guffaws of laughter that spill through the house’s thin walls. He can hardly  _ breathe  _ through the anger of it, through the bile-acrid burn of betrayal. 

_ (Means you’ve got people.) _

Inside, Kasami pours the assembled party another round. 

“That’s brilliant,” another woman says. 

“So he really isn’t yours?” the first man says. 

A pause. Cigarette smoke like ash in Zoro’s lungs as it drifts through the open window. 

“He ain’t mine any more than the donkey that pulls your cart is yours.”

_ (Means you’ve got—)  _

His feet carry him away from the house, numb and shaking all the way through with a deep, incomprehensible kind of anger. Zoro walks until he crests the top of the hill that marks the edge of the town and the road to the next, hands clasped tight over his mouth _(right where Kasumi likes to smack him)_ and shaking with the effort of holding all the _sounds_ in. 

At the top of the hill, the moon shines white and pearly. 

There, he takes his hands off of his mouth. And then, Zoro  _ screams.  _

_ (Means you’ve—)  _

_Nah,_ he decides, wailing out all his anger into the night. _Doesn't mean shit._

* * *

“You’re kind of an idiot, aren’t you?” 

She’s bested him.  _ Again.  _ Nearly boiling over with frustration, his body screaming at him, Zoro stays right where he is, flat on his back on the ground. He refuses to answer her.  _ Next time,  _ he promises himself.  _ I’ll win next time.  _

Kuina sighs. “God, you’re such a baby.” 

Zoro’s not looking at her, so he doesn’t see her move. He hears her feet shuffle through the grass and suddenly, she’s lying beside him, their shoulders just barely brushing. Zoro swallows and tries not to blush. 

(People don’t get close to him. Especially not  _ girls.  _ All the boys in this village talk about it enough for Zoro to know… when a  _ girl  _ gets close to you, it means something different. Special.)

“Zoro, why do you want to beat me?” She asks him. The sky overhead is cloudless and blue. 

“Because I want to be the greatest.” 

Kuina laughs. It’s not a very pretty laugh. It’s kind of harsh. Rough. (Not at all like Kasumi’s laugh, though. So, it’s not entirely unpleasant. Not to Zoro.)

“Me too,” she breathes, a whispered admission that spreads her face into a hopeful little smile. Zoro doesn’t point out the obvious—they can’t  _ both  _ be the greatest—because it seems like she’s gearing up to say something else. “Hey, Zoro? Do you have marks?” 

“What? Of course.”

She touches his arm purposefully with her own. It’s a brief whisper of contact before it's gone. 

“I was born markless,” Kuina says. 

“No way. Really?” Zoro sits up. Not for the first time since Zoro left town for the dojo, he thinks of Sho. Markless, too. 

_ (Means you’ve got—)  _

Being born without a mark is like a curse. At least, that’s how the adults talk about it. Zoro’s heard the whispers before.  _ Loveless. Destined to die early. Heartless. Monster. Doomed. Alone.  _

Kuina hums. She’s tearing up single blades of grass from the ground, winding them around and around her finger over and over again. 

“It doesn’t change much. Not really. The legends say that people born markless can only form relationships that are doomed from the start. They don’t have the gods’ blessing. That’s what a mark is. A guarantee that a person will fit you just the way they’re supposed to,” she says. 

Zoro lays back down and stares up at the sky. “I don’t give a crap about the gods,” he grumbles. "I don't care about supposed-to's, either."

Kuina laughs again. This time she snorts. (It’s  _ such  _ a gross laugh.) Zoro kinda wants to smack her. He knows he wouldn't be able to. She'd dodge. Too fast for him. 

“Really?” She asks between laughter, sounding surprised and pleased at the same time. 

“We make our own fate,” he tells her. A dragonfly races overhead. Cicadas hum in the trees around them. “I’m not gonna let any  _ god  _ or anyone at all  tell me what’s right for me. The only person that knows that is me.” 

“But you have marks, though.”

_ (Means you’ve—) _

“So what?” Zoro grumbles. “I’ll judge them when I meet them and that’s all there is to it.” __

They’re both quiet for a bit. The sweat on Zoro’s body has started to cool, leaving him tired in a pleasant, shivery way. She really gave him a run for his money, this time.  _ Whatever, I’ll get better.  _

“Thanks, Zoro,” Kuina says. And before he has a chance to answer ( _ “what for?”)  _ she kisses him on the cheek, dry and brief and wholly unremarkable. 

“H-hey!” Zoro leaps to his feet, face flaming. He slaps a hand over his cheek. Kuina is already laughing, sword in hand, and takes off running towards the dojo. 

He gives chase.

* * *

Kuina teaches him the single most valuable lesson about soulmates that Zoro will ever come to learn. 

_ Soulmates aren’t everything.  _

There are other ways in which people are bound together. From memories to blood spilled to blood drawn to secrets and promises and hopes shared; there are so many things that bind souls. 

Zoro does not have Kuina’s mark. On his chest lives a brilliant sun, wreathed in swirling waves and clouds etched in black and white. On his back is a large swirly-shell that trails off at the end, little black wave-lines in its wake. In the crook of his hip dangles a single, solid black heart from a string. Zoro has three marks and none of them are hers. (Kuina dies with no marks on her at all.)

She is his first soulmate. 

_ An oath is enough.  _

* * *

He leaves Koshiro’s dojo as soon as he turns sixteen with Kuina’s sword at his side—the only one that really, truly  _ matters  _ out of the three katana he carries.

When he sets out of the village for good, he does not stop by her grave. 

(All that’s there is just a body. Zoro knows he carries her soul in the white sheath at his hip.)

After a day and night of walking a long and dusty road that winds from this place to the next, Zoro stops at a tavern for booze and a meal. The bartender asks for his name, an attempt at idle small-talk. Behind the bartender’s balding head hangs a wall of bounty-posters tacked up with knives. Zeroes trail after names.  _ Dead or alive.  _

“Roronoa Zoro.” 

(It’s good to keep the important lessons close to his heart.)

“Let me see those wanted posters.”

* * *

“I thought you had money…?” It’s barely intelligible coming out of Luffy’s crammed-full mouth. The distinct impression of a bone elongates his rubber cheek from the inside, generating a bizarre protrusion from his face. Spittle from his mouth flecks onto Zoro’s own face.

It… should not be as endearing as it is. Nothing about it is endearing at all. 

(The persistent burning-thruming-itching-stinging- _ buzzing-humming-oh-gods-yes-yes-yes  _ of the mark on his chest says otherwise.)

“Why would you think I had money?” Zoro responds.

The whiny kid with the pink hair and the glasses face-plants into the table with an anguished, suffering sigh.

Zoro has a strong compulsion to do the same. 

_ Luffy  _ touched him with burning hands and boiling eyes and pressed his words straight into the space inside of Zoro’s chest with the deep, uninhibited force of an earthquake. _“Join my crew,”_ he had said and every part of Zoro’s blood had sang out in unison, a fever pitch of  _ you, you, you  _ bleeding into  _ yes, yes, yes  _ and none of it made  _ sense— _

Not until he saw him _ fight. _

_“I’m Monkey D. Luffy and I’m going to be king of the pirates,”_ he said and Zoro didn’t quite understand—not until he watched him move. Not until he felt his battle-presence. Not until he tasted hints of Luffy’s  _ will  _ shining in his eyes. 

And, oh, had the mark on his chest  _ burned.  _

Once he had seen, once he had  _ known— _ he understands the weight of a dream, he carries something bigger than himself, too—Zoro  _ needed  _ in a way he has never quite  _ needed  _ anything before. 

_ This  _ was not a vague hint of “mother”; not an empty space in his life that one could fill with lies. 

_ (Means you—)  _

Looking at this gangly, skinny kid with  _ Wado Ichimonji’s  _ hilt bindings scrawling up his arm, Zoro’s not even sure that Luffy  _ has  _ the capacity to lie in him. Every press of his hands on Zoro’s skin spoke of trust and reverence and brutal, back-breaking honesty enough to summon armies to their knees. 

_ (—you’ve got—)  _

“Zorrrrooo,” Luffy is looking at him and their plates are clear. When that happened, Zoro couldn't say. There was food and now there is not. Perhaps this is another certainty that is Luffy-borne. 

His head is propped up in his hands, his elbows planted on the table, his eyes are soft and fond under the brim of his hat. “Zorrrrrooo,” Luffy hums, and Zoro knows that he’s tasting his name with the same sort of appreciation that he gave to their food moments earlier. A foot nudges his under the table. 

_ (—got—)  _

“What are you thinkin?” Luffy asks. 

“You,” Zoro blurts out.  _ Shit.  _ “Uh—”

But Luffy doesn’t laugh at him. He just… waits. Smiles. Bumps their feet together again. It doesn’t matter if the pink-haired wimp is watching them funny. It doesn’t matter that Zoro might have fucked it up because Luffy is— _ Luffy is waiting _ — 

_ (Means you’ve got people.)  _

“You’re nothing like I thought you would be,” Zoro breathes. (Very far away, in a different time and a different place entirely, a child  _ screams  _ out into the night.) 

“Good,” Luffy says. Simple. Like it’s that easy. Like he can take one look at Zoro and understand all the things that he himself can't articulate. 

(And finally, someone  _ hears  _ it.) 

Luffy smiles with his whole face. His laugh, even when it’s quiet and more subdued, sounds like  _ “shi shi shi”  _ and it warms Zoro from the tips of his ears to the soles of his feet, even though he’s spent the better part of the past month baking out in the sun. 

“I’m going to join the marines!” The wimp declares abruptly. 

The thread of conversation is thus lost, but the warmth that lingers just under Zoro’s skin remains. He keeps an eye on Luffy the whole time. (It feels right.)

* * *

Their little dinghy is ridiculously small and made even smaller by how determined Luffy is to give Zoro not a single inch of personal space at any moment. Not that Zoro’s really complaining about that. 

Luffy insists that Zoro not wear a shirt so that he can study his own mark on Zoro’s skin. He’s surprisingly possessive over the sight (not that Zoro’s own heart doesn’t give a powerful jerk everytime he glimpses the mark that adorns Luffy’s right arm) to the point where he’s always touching it. His surprisingly light yet calloused fingertips trace each swirl of the clouds. With their legs tangled together and Luffy’s gentle touch burning a hot brand straight through his ribcage, it’s a wonder that they last as long as they do. 

Luffy’s thumb catches on Zoro’s nipple pointedly. The sensation rocks him like a jolt of lightning. He growls. 

“Watch it.” 

“Shi shi shi… Sorry, sorry.” Luffy goes back to tracing, his head pillowed on Zoro’s abdomen, sprawled in the open vee of his legs and— 

“Luffy,” Zoro warns him when he squirms in a particularly suggestive way. 

“Zoro,” Luffy replies. And then he deliberately swirls his hips, the friction it generates a sudden delicious drag of sensation. 

_ Shit. _ The tension between them coils tight and snaps with the same rubbery twang that Luffy's limbs are prone to. 

They collide in a mess of eager, grabbing hands, biting teeth, and seeking tongues, gasping into each others’ mouths and clawing raggedly at the clothes that separate them. 

Luffy’s chanting, a litany of “yes, yes, yes, mine, mine, mine” and each word fuels the fire that’s been building inside of him ever since Luffy touched him back in that stupid fucking marine-yard. 

Zoro gets his hands on either side of Luffy’s head and pulls him back roughly by the hair, pushing his tongue as deep as he can get it into his wet fucking mouth between gasps of “mine, yes, Zoro, mine.” Losing leverage, Luffy’s nails rake painful lines across Zoro’s shoulder blades, the arc of pleasure-pain overriding everything else. He must growl into Luffy’s mouth. Rubber legs squeeze around his waist, gripping. A hand shuffles between them, paws at the mark on his chest. 

“Let me see, I wanna—” Luffy moans when Zoro gets a hand around him, a shameless and wanting sound. He writhes like he can’t quite figure out what to do with the feeling of it. Zoro tightens his hand. Seals his mouth over Luffy’s. Only to get  _ yanked  _ back hard by his hair, Luffy’s knuckles buried to the roots. 

“You too. Zoro too,” Luffy insists. "Waited for Zoro for so long _—_ " he gasps, his mouth burning a hot trail down the length of Zoro's neck. " _—I knew_ you'd be first, I just _knew."_

Zoro grunts. The hand firmly planted in his hair is Luffy’s right. His own mark on the inside of Luffy’s right arm is so close that Zoro can see every fleck of red-black blood in the design. It hits him like a hammer. Like a tidal wave. 

Without conscious input, he latches his mouth to what he can reach of it—the tender, soft skin of Luffy’s inner arm in the crook of his elbow. 

The sound that escapes Luffy is suspiciously like a whimper. The dinghy rocks violently when he topples Zoro flat onto his back, climbing into his lap and forcing his head bent backwards in a painful arch that nearly cracks his skull against the wood. Zoro moans as Luffy’s lips and teeth skitter frantically across his bared throat. It’s all he can do to clutch at his hips and  _ hang on  _ while Luffy starts to  _ move.  _

It’s artless. They rub together at a fevered pace, half-mad and wholly rhythmless in their scramble for friction. One hand stays locked on Zoro’s hair, the other flat on the mark spanning his chest. 

_ “Zoro,”  _ Luffy moans.

His orgasm takes him by complete and utter surprise. 

_ “Captain,”  _ escapes his lips at the height of climax.  With a sound suspiciously like a hiccup, Luffy follows him off the edge. 

* * *

“Oh,” Nami says, after. Their ships are lashed together, and, as Luffy likes to demand whenever they’re sailing, Zoro’s shirt has been lost to some corner of the dinghy. The mark on his chest shines like gold. The shell on his back is impossible to miss, despite it’s lack of color. (It’s beautiful, Zoro had decided after Luffy gave him the gift of exploring that mark. With it out of sight as it has been his whole life, he's never truly had a chance to just... observe it. Luffy’s own copy of the spiral-shell coils around his stomach, cradled in his very center. Zoro had never actually been able to see the mark _—not like this—_ not until Luffy. He was missing  _ so much  _ until Luffy.) 

“Zoro’s one of my soulmates!” Luffy declares. 

“Sorry, ‘one of’?” Nami blinks.

Luffy slings a rubbery arm around Zoro’s shoulders. “We have  _ three!”  _

“Jesus, there’s two more of you?” It sounds like she hadn’t quite meant to say that out loud, by the look on her face.

Zoro doesn't... dislike her, per say. He just recognizes a liar when he sees one. (He carries the name _Roronoa_ with him for a reason. Lessons are to be remembered.) Something about her unnerves him. Maybe it's simply that she's hiding something. Maybe it's just in the way she shrieks at him. 

But Luffy likes her. Luffy trusts her, even. _Chose_ her. 

(That has to count for something.)

* * *

A tearfully grateful Kaya invites their meager little pirate crew back to her mansion for dinner as a thank-you for saving her. The realization of what a horrible, irreversible decision this was does not dawn on Usopp, Nami or the still (understandably) overwhelmed Kaya until Luffy crawls over the dinner table and straight into Zoro’s lap after about the third or fourth course. 

“Uh—” Usopp utters. It’s the natural involuntary noise of surprise one might make upon seeing Luffy alternate bruisingly rough, messy kisses with enormous bites of meat. 

Zoro, who by now has become accustomed to Luffy’s insistence that they touch each other whenever possible, holds onto Luffy’s hips with both hands and takes each kiss as it comes, returning them with equal vigor and…  _ tongue.  _ (God, he has _got_ to tell Luffy to tone it down with the tongue.) 

“O-oh— _ oh my _ … I—” Kaya stutters. She goes pale and turns pink at the same time. 

Nami slams her hands down flat on the table and shouts with enough force to rattle the chandelier over the table,  _ “Rule one,  _ you  _ fuck-heads!”  _

Zoro and Luffy break away from each others’ mouths with a slick sound and a visible ring of spit tethering their lips. 

“Zoro, what was rule one?” Luffy whispers (terribly). 

_ “UH?”  _ Usopp repeats, loud and insistent. 

Zoro shrugs and paws at Luffy’s ass with one hand. “Dunno,” he says. 

Nami lashes out, kicking the single chair that houses them and sending it flying out from under them. They hit the floor with a clatter, Zoro shouting and Luffy squawking. 

“Rule one! Keep your hands, mouths, and  _ dicks  _ to  _ yourselves  _ when there are  _ other people around!”  _

(Yeah, it's her _shrieking_ that makes her intolerable.)

* * *

In all fairness, Zoro had an  _ extremely  _ busy morning. From Johnny and Yosaku turning up half-dead to Luffy discovering (and immediately damaging) a floating restaurant, the nagging backache he’s had since they came upon the  _ Baratie  _ was regaled to the back of his mind. 

But, by the time they make it up to the front doors of the place, Zoro almost collapses against them. The nagging pain has reached a fever pitch, becoming an ache not unlike getting stabbed, but straight in his spine. He can feel his own heartbeat pounding in his back.  _ Fuck.  _

“Zoro, are you alright?” Usopp asks, hovering. 

_ I don’t know.  _

“Zoro, you’re looking really pale,” and for the sea-witch to sound that worried about him, something must be  _ really  _ wrong. 

The pain becomes so all encompassing that it’s hard to focus. Without permission, he pushes the door open, practically staggering through. He finds his eyes unconsciously scanning the room as if he’s searching for something.  _ Luffy?  _ No, Luffy’s not it. He's right there, standing on the opposite end of the room, frozen in what looks like a kitchen doorway. Must be something else. What does his brain want him to see? Fuck, it  _ hurts.  _ He must be  _ bleeding _ . It's hard to focus, like this.

“Zoro…?” Nami begins. 

Across the way, a leggy blonde in a suit kicks a man full in the face, body bending like a circus acrobat. The sound of the impact rips through Zoro like a bullet. 

(In his subconscious mind, he registers that Luffy rocks subtly where he’s standing, like he’s feeling the same impact wash through him that Zoro is.)

“Messing with a cook of the sea is a good way to get yourself killed. Remember that.” The man's voice rolls through Zoro like a wave. It’s deep. Gruff. Cocky. A plume of cigarette smoke blooms around the guy’s head like a halo. 

He turns around. 

His single visible eyebrow ends in a  _ spiral. _


	3. Sanji

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Hey, cook! Join my crew! You should be the cook on my pirate ship!” 
> 
> The “HUH?!” that escapes him is entirely involuntary. Before he knows it, the kid has jumped over the rail and onto the lower level of the deck and with quick, self-assured strides, he marches up to Sanji and smiles another one of those blindingly bright grins. 
> 
> “My name is Monkey D. Luffy and I’m gonna’ be the king of the pirates.” He pauses for a beat. “Can I touch you?” 
> 
> “What?!” Sanji shouts. “No!"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this is the longest chapter by far... OOPS. May endless thank-yous to my excellent beta, [starrypier](https://starrypier.tumblr.com/)   
> Half of this chapter was born on discord

There is an idiot in a straw hat following the Shitty Geezer around. He keeps sending Sanji these…  _ looks  _ that speak of a just  _ barely  _ contained madness and Sanji absolutely does  _ not  _ want anything to do with  _ that.  _ He’s had enough of shitty customers today after that marine prick. 

“Hey, table in your section, brat,” Patty remarks in passing. “Pirates. Try not to start a fight with them, please.” 

“That Fullboy-prick had it coming!” Sanji bites back, making a swipe for Patty’s legs as the other man lumbers past. 

There’s a nagging  _ feeling  _ that’s been lingering around all morning. Like he’s forgotten something important. Absently, Sanji scratches at the back of his gloved hand. With that single motion, the  _ feeling  _ blossoms into a positively unbearable itch. 

(Alarm bells start to ring that Sanji pointedly  _ does not pay any attention to. _ He still has the whole rest of a shift to get through. There are meals to make and shitty, annoying customers to tend to. He’ll look  _ later.  _ He’ll think about it  _ later. _ )

At the table in question sits the most beautiful girl Sanji has ever  _ seen.  _

Her short hair is a vivid orange, a shade of the setting sun. Her pale skin is dotted with freckles that speak of a significant time spent outdoors. She has the most perfect body and the most incredible voice as she scolds her companions (two men) for doing something obnoxious. 

It’s love at first sight. 

(The closer he draws to the table, the more his leg starts to ache and throb. It hurts sometimes, the ache and pull of old scar tissue, but never like  _ this— _ never like a fresh injury—) 

_ Don’t think about it. Don’t think about it. Don’t— _

“Mademoiselle, your beauty has left me speechless,” Sanji tells her, because really, what else can he say? The girl takes on a delightfully devilish kind of smirk at the attention— _good, a woman that knows her worth, knows that she’s a goddess and will let him show it_ —and she allows him to kiss her hand. Her skin tastes faintly of citrus.

At the other end of the table, a man scoffs. “Hey. Waiter. Booze.” 

_ Great. Another prick without an ounce of manners in his skull.  _

“I’m not a waiter,” Sanji growls out through clenched teeth. “I’m a  _ chef. _ ” 

The man shrugs. “Look like a waiter to me.” 

Seething, Sanji turns his attention to the man. He’s effortlessly broad shouldered and muscular in the most irritating way. He's dressed in a ratty white shirt that clings to every inch of his cut torso in a manner that's just _obscene_. Everything about his outward appearance, from the smug challenge in his expression to the dangerous cut of his jaw, screams _trouble._ Incongruously, three dainty golden earrings drip from only one ear and, not only that, a shock of the most hideously green hair Sanji has _ever seen_ erupts from the man’s head like seaweed off the ocean floor. Anything even remotely menacing about the man is demolished by how fucking ridiculous his hair is. The man carries three swords. 

_ Probably overcompensating, _ Sanji decides. 

The other man at the table with The Most Radiant Woman to Ever Exist is wholly unremarkable, save for his incredibly long nose and riotously curly hair. When Sanji turns his discerning glare to him, he squeaks and ducks behind Seaweed Head. 

“That’s a funny eyebrow you’ve got there, curly,” Seaweed-Head abruptly remarks. His unbearably smug face just _screams_ "kick me." 

Sanji can feel  a vein erupt into prominence on his own forehead. Something about this guy just gets under his skin. Although it doesn’t seem possible, he’s managed to also have to deal with the  _ only other customer  _ that is  _ just as  _ if not even  _ more  _ annoying than that shitty marine.  _ Great.  _

“Got something to say to me, asshole?” It is a testament to Sanji’s endless restraint in the presence of a beautiful woman that he did not immediately just kick Seaweed-Head straight through the floor and into the ocean. 

“Zoro, shut up,” the woman hisses. With a gentle touch to his sleeve, she immediately captures all of Sanji’s attention. “Sorry about him. He’s an idiot. What he meant to say is that everything here is just…” she flutters her eyelashes. “...so pricey. I’m not sure what we should try.” 

He drops to a knee about as quickly as he can manage. A woman this extraordinary should never have to worry about  _ price.  _ He tells her as much and watches her eyes gleam. That alone is worth not having crushed Seaweed-Head’s skull under his shoe. And once he’s done waxing poetic and taking their orders, she graces him with her  _ name.  _

“I’m Nami, and these two are Usopp,” she indicates the skittish man with the long nose, “and Zoro.” 

_ Zoro.  _ What a fittingly  _ brutish  _ name for a man that looks like  _ that.  _

“Should I call you Curly, cook?” Zoro taunts, grinning in a wholly shark-like manner. 

“You keep my name out of your  _ uncouth  _ mouth, Seaweed-Head. But you, Nami-swan, may call me Sanji.” She smiles at him and he makes a tactical and graceful retreat before unfortunate stains from his bleeding nose make their way onto the white tablecloth. 

Just as Sanji makes it back into the kitchen, a lanky and short kid crashes against his side, his soapy, dripping-wet hands absolutely soiling his suit jacket in an instant.

“Oi—!” But before Sanji can remove his sudden extra-appendage or save his jacket, the boy with the strawhat sends a wholly disarming smile up at him and starts talking at about a thousand miles a minute. 

“Hi! Did you like my crew? They’re great, huh? Nami is scary when she shouts and she makes a lot of rules but she’s really smart. She’s the best navigator in the world. Usopp is my liar! He’s really good at it. We just got  _ Merry Go  _ from the butler of his soulmate, who was a really nice sheep-man! We saved Usopp's soulmate--her name's Kaya--from an angry cat-guy. He was a pirate, too. And Zoro is my swordsman. He’s going to be the greatest. He fights with three swords and the third goes in his mouth which looks really funny, but he's actually super strong. We’re soulmates and I think I’m yours, too. Do you like the ocean?"

The world comes to an abrupt, screeching halt. 

Hidden under the dark, leather glove on his right hand, the sun on Sanji’s skin  _ burns.  _ There’s a feeling, kind of like getting off of a ship and onto land for the first time in a long time. Brief, disorientation and then a sudden realignment of the world. There’s a subtle  _ pop  _ in Sanji’s ears as if there’s been a change in altitude.

The next breath he sucks in feels like the first inhale of a cigarette after a long day. An electric current jolts through his skin, originating from his side where the kid in the strawhat is gripping his blazer with wet hands. 

Still catching up to the rest of the world, it seems, all Sanji can manage is a strangled, “What?” 

The boy laughs. (The sound reverberates through Sanji’s whole body, like a slow, bubbling electric shock or like particularly strongly carbonated soda.) 

“Your eyebrow matches your mark! That’s so neat!” and then the boy is  _ lifting up his shirt  _ and— 

_ Wait, wait, wait—stop, stop—  _

Sanji tears out of his grip and  _ bolts.  _

* * *

_ Failure. Failure. Failure.  _

The Germa scientists don’t talk to him like he’s a person. Which, if Sanji is being honest, he’s come to anticipate from his father’s men. Their voices are clinical and distant. They talk about him— _ subject three— _ in words and phrases that Sanji doesn’t really understand. All that he can glean is that they aren’t saying anything new. 

_ Failure.  _

Sanji’s just glad that his brothers didn’t know about this round of testing, or they’d have definitely come to mock him and watch. At the same time, he’s glad that Reiju _did_ know and that she is here. She doesn’t say much, but her eyes on him are infinitely kinder than those of the scientists.

The door to the laboratory swings open and the imposing figure of Vinsmoke Judge cuts a dark, twisting shadow across the floor. Sanji swallows. He  _ really  _ misses his mom. 

“What are the results of the latest battery?” Judge demands, sweeping across the room directly towards the head scientists. 

“Not ideal, Sir. Just as we feared the…  _ marks  _ indicated all along, his limbic system remains completely undamaged. The amygdala—”

“So subject three is a complete failure?” The silence that hangs over the room is deafening. No one dares to breathe. Father scoffs. “Utterly useless.” 

Heavy footsteps announce his approach. On the exam table, Sanji cannot help but squirm. Father is even  _ more  _ terrifying now that mother is…  _ gone.  _ ( _ She would have never allowed these tests,  _ Sanji thinks, trying to hold onto the memory of her perfume to calm himself.  _ She wouldn’t have let them—)  _

_(He is a failure, Sora._ His father’s voice, booming and scathing in equal measure. His mother’s voice, weak and tremulous though it was, replying without giving an inch. _He is our son, Judge._ )

Judge towers over him, face shadowed by the overhead lights. He scoffs, an ugly sound. “Are you  _ crying,  _ boy?” 

Sanji bites his tongue so as to stop up any sounds that threaten to squeak out of him. He can tell the technician monitoring the electrodes on his body wants to tell him to stop shaking, but no one would  _ dare  _ talk over Vinsmoke Judge, so the technician waits. 

Father scoffs.  _ “Sentiment,”  _ he spits, the word like poison in his mouth. “I knew what you were from the beginning. A  _ mistake.  _ A  _ blight.  _ A  _ stain  _ upon the great name of the Germa Kingdom. And look at you. Just littered with…  _ sentiments. _ ” Father has a near bone-crushing grip on Sanji’s arm, tugging his hand up to meet his stare. 

The unrealized mark of the sun etched on the back of his right hand has stopped feeling like something magical. Instead, it feels like something that is going to get him killed. 

“And to have not one but  _ three?  _ You aren’t even worth the breath it took to name you, boy.” He drops his hand flat to the table and summons over the head scientist with a  _ look.  _ “I want them gone. Removed at once.” 

_ No—they can’t—right? Not my soulmates, not them—  _

“Sir?” 

“What part of that order was unclear to you?” Sanji meets Reiju’s eyes across the room, desperate.  _ They can’t mean—Reiju, please. They can’t mean—?  _

Sanji has never seen his sister look so afraid, before. 

(His mother, hands so gentle, tracing the lines of sunshine that mark his hands, the heart emblazoned over his chest, the pattern that races down his leg.  _ These are gifts, Sanji. The greatest gifts of all.)  _

“I want them  _ removed.”  _ Vinsmoke Judge, for the first time since entering the room, looks his third son in the eye. His gaze is cold. “Burn them off.” 

_ Please.  _

The technicians burst into a flurry of movement. Before Sanji can even think of moving, the restraints around him tighten (head, wrists, ankles, torso) and the leg of his pants is pulled up and over his knee. His largest mark lives there, a winding snake-skin like pattern of intricate, crisscrossing bindings down his right leg. 

_ Please, don’t.  _

Sanji thinks he begs. 

_ Father, please! _

A technician in a welder’s mask approaches him holding an item not unlike a blowtorch. 

(Sanji  _ knows  _ he begs.) 

At the first touch of the fire to his skin, he blacks out. It is almost a mercy.

(Later, he will learn that Reiju convinced Judge to not go through with the removal of all three marks. Later, he will learn of his punishment—of his  _ confinement  _ to the dungeons—when he wakes up utterly alone, and locked in an iron mask. Later, he will scream and sob and grieve as he stares at what used to be a soulmate mark and sees only a mottled mess of burn scars, dark lines, and melted skin.)

_ Failure.  _

(Hands fluttering useless over his bandaged leg. _I couldn't even protect you_ \--) 

He wishes he had turned out just the same as his siblings. Maybe then it wouldn’t hurt so bad. Sanji would at least never have had a mark to lose.

_ That  _ would have been a mercy. 

* * *

Sanji, nineteen and shaking at the words of a kid with a smile like spun-gold, vomits into a potted plant over by the stairs. Patty is shouting  _ something  _ at him and patrons are gasping—some even exclaiming their disgust—but Sanji is  _ shaking  _ too hard to care. 

_ He wasn’t lying.  _ A lie wouldn’t have felt like  _ that.  _ But yet…  _ this can’t be happening. _

_ (Failure!)  _

Sanji’s head clears just moments later to a commotion at the door. A man half-starved stumbles inside, looking like he’s seen Hell itself. Patty goes to intercept him when the man collapses on the floor just in the doorway. 

Momentarily grateful that the attention is no longer on him, Sanji straightens from the poor plant and snatches a napkin out of the basket of clean silverware sets to wipe his mouth. 

A hand grabs the back of his collar forcefully. The smell of spices and the old man’s shitty aftershave hits his still-rolling stomach. 

“Let go!” Sanji hisses, twisting away from Zeff as if it’s going to make a difference. 

“What in all the Blues, Eggplant?” Zeff growls. Zeff is not the type of man to express concern. This is as good as Sanji is going to get, from him, truly. 

“Fuck off, I’m  _ fine.”  _   
  
“You’re upsetting the customers,” the Shitty Geezer growls. “And what is going on over there?” He gestures with a twitch of his head towards the collapsed man where he is pleading with Patty about…  _ something.  _

“How the fuck should I know?” Sanji grumbles. 

Zeff narrows his eyes, frowning a lot more deeply than Sanji puking into the plant would elicit. “And what the hell is this I hear about a  _ soulmate?”  _

_ Fuck. No. Not this, anything but this—  _

_ (“A real man loves women.”)  _

“What? Nothing. Get your ears checked, shitty old-man.” 

Out of his peripheral vision, Sanji sees the guy with the strawhat run up to the table of pirates.  _ Crazy—he has to be absolutely crazy.  _ But before he can decide whether or not to intervene with that  _ mess,  _ the decision gets made for him as Patty throws the starving guy out the front door. And that— 

Well. Sanji knows what to do about that. 

* * *

The pirate, Gin, eats his food with all the grace and gratitude of someone recently starving. That is to say, he sobs into the bowl and scrapes it clean with the most sincere expression of thanks Sanji has seen in a long time. 

It feels right, for all that this day has been kind of a complete and utter mess. 

While Gin finishes his dish and the drink Sanji brought him, he decides it’s as good a time as any to take his smoke break. A blissful three or four drags go down until, startlingly loud— 

“Lucky! You got some food! You were almost about to die before!” 

_ Fuck.  _ Boisterous laughter gives the owner of the voice away as the guy from earlier. He’s on the upper deck, leaning over the rail with a dopey smile that, for how stupid it looks aside, seems rather sincere. Before Sanji can process or even respond to his shouting, he starts again. 

“Hey, cook! Join my crew! You should be the cook on my pirate ship!” 

The  _ “HUH?!”  _ that escapes him is entirely involuntary. Before he knows it, the kid has jumped over the rail and onto their level of the deck and with quick, self-assured strides, he marches up to Sanji and smiles another one of those blindingly bright grins. 

“My name is Monkey D. Luffy and I’m gonna’ be the king of the pirates.” He pauses for a beat. “Can I touch you?” 

“ _ What?!”  _ Sanji shouts. “No! What?” 

Luffy laughs in a snickering chuckle that sounds a bit like _"_ _s_ _ hi shi shi”.  _

“Okay!” He acquiesces easily, instead climbing up to sit on the railing just behind Sanji’s head. He has to duck out of the way to avoid Luffy’s feet, swinging back and forth perilously close to his head. “But you should join my crew.” 

_ What in the ever loving fuck is happening?  _

“No, I refuse.” 

Luffy frowns. “I refuse!” 

_ “What.”  _

“I refuse your refusal!” 

“That’s—” Sanji splutters. “That’s not how  _ anything  _ works!” 

“Nope. I refuse!” 

“You can’t—Listen, I have my own reasons for staying here, alright? I’m not joining your crew.” Sanji sighs, scrubbing a rough, gloved-hand over his face. 

Luffy hums in thought and almost kicks him upside the head again. “Why?” 

“None of your business,” Sanji grumbles, moving the kid by his ankle away from his head. At the contact, even through the fabric of his gloves, a sizzle of electricity dances up his arm, focused on the back of his hand. Involuntarily, Sanji hisses and pulls away. 

Luffy stares at him, an awed little expression on his face, before starting back up that snickering laugh. “ _ Shi shi shi…  _ You’re my soulmate, though. So it is my business, right?” 

Gin’s head snaps to attention. Sanji feels a blush stubbornly begin to work it’s way up his neck. 

“S-shut up! I am  _ not.  _ You’re crazy. I’m not joining your pirate crew and I’m not your soulmate, either,” he hisses. 

Luffy just…  _ smiles  _ at him. There’s something in his expression, something so unflappably serene that just makes Sanji— 

_ No. It’s not him. It can’t be him. I like girls. Not…  _

An ocean breeze picks up around them, prompting Luffy to hold his hat in place on his head. On the inside of his raised arm is a flash of snow-white binding, flecks of red— 

_ A Realized soul mark.  _

(The smell of his own burning flesh. The raw scrape of his own screams up his throat. Realizing it was gone,  _ gone, gone! _ )

( _ Burn them off.)  _

Without any conscious input, Sanji has leapt to his feet and reached out for  _ that Mark  _ on Luffy’s skin. His hands shake as he moves, but he’s hardly aware of it. Can’t  _ think  _ past all the rushing blood in his ears, can’t  _ breathe  _ through how sick the smell of his own burning flesh is making him, can’t,  _ can’t— _

“Oh? It’s Zoro’s mark. Do you have him, too? He has yours,” Luffy’s voice cuts through the chaos in his own head like a bell. 

Sanji swallows. Finds his breath is stuck in his throat. 

(A child's voice, aching broken sobbing, _I couldn't even protect you,_ and bandages stained red—)

“I—No. No, I don’t,” he finds himself saying. Luffy simply hums and turns his arm over gently in Sanji’s grasp, like this isn’t the weirdest thing in the world, like Sanji’s brain isn’t melting out of his ears. 

“You have mine though, yeah? It’s a sun. We met earlier, in the kitchen, so it should have color now,” he explains, smiling at him like this is a conversation that he expected to have this morning, like this is a conversation he is perfectly content to walk Sanji through while he stands here, his brain turning to smoke and ash in his head. 

It’s the work of a few seconds to slip the glove off of his right hand. 

_ (You’re to wear these, from now on. Father doesn’t want anyone to see them anymore than he wants people to see you. You understand, don't you? _ _ )  _

He takes them off for himself, to confirm that  _ this all must be some kind of joke,  _ not because this smiling kid with the stupid strawhat said that he would have  _ color  _ on his skin. 

A sound eerily similar to a strangled sort of sob escapes him. The black leather glove flutters to the deck. 

_"Wow!”_ Luffy exclaims, gathering up Sanji’s hand between his own and _oh—_ that _feeling_ is like nothing else in the world—his _soulmate_ touching his bare skin. “It _is_ you!” 

There, on the back of Sanji’s right hand where there’s only ever been a colorless etching of a sun suspended over rolling ocean waves, is a golden, glittering, _r_ _ ealized mark.  _

_ (These are gifts, Sanji.)  _

It’s... beautiful. 

Swirling, faintly pink clouds ghost across and behind the brilliant, golden sun. Rolling blue waves beneath it give the illusion of motion. There is a  _ painting  _ under his skin, Sanji thinks, half-mad with it. There is a  _ painting  _ on his most prized possessions—his  _ hands— _ a living work of art. And the mark belongs to this  _ boy.  _

_ Boy.  _

( _ A real man loves women—)  _

_ Oh,  _ and isn’t this an exceptionally cruel joke? 

“I don’t—” Sanji swallows. “I don’t understand. This can’t be—I’m. I’m not…” 

He can’t look Luffy in the eyes, anymore. He  _ just met him  _ and he can’t even bear to look at him like a man any longer. 

“It’s alright!” Luffy chirps, seemingly wholly unconcerned. His thumb—skin tough but warm and surprisingly soft—makes these little circles on the back of Sanji’s hand and he can’t admit to himself how good the simple comfort feels. “We’ll figure it out! Just join my crew! You can be our chef and come to the Grand Line with us—” 

“I refuse,” Sanji repeats. 

A pang races through him at the thought that his refusal might cause Luffy to pull away, to let go of him and leave him wholly unmoored—drowning among his own unbearable thoughts—but mercifully, he  _ doesn’t.  _

Luffy squeezes his hand between his own. “I see. You have a dream, here, then?” 

Shocked, Sanji’s eyes snap to Luffy’s. The depth of understanding that he sees there  _ floors  _ him. 

“Not—not exactly, but I have… a reason that I can’t leave.” 

_ Stop talking, you idiot. You don’t owe him anything. It’s not like you can give him anything, either. You know this. A bond with you isn’t worth anything—  _

“The old man with the hat and the mustache?” Luffy asks, making a face. “But what’s _your_ dream?  Is it the ocean?” 

“The All-Blue,” drops out of his mouth on a heavy, exhaled breath. _How does he know...?_

“What’s that?” Luffy asks. 

And Sanji—helpless, fanciful, useless romantic Sanji— _t_ _ ells him.  _

* * *

“I’m—Excuse me for interrupting,” Gin begins, a firmly uncomfortable look on his face. Sanji, only just now remembering that he’s here—and has been here the  _ whole time, oh holy shit— _ turns a furious shade of red. “But, Sanji-san. I cannot thank you enough for what you’ve done for me here today.” 

“Don’t worry about it,” Sanji says as nonchalantly as he can manage. He pulls his cast-aside glove firmly back onto his hand as he gathers himself. “No one deserves to starve. It’s a cook’s duty to feed the starving.” 

“It was—” Gin blinks, looking overwhelmed. “The most delicious meal I’ve ever had.” He bows, deeply. “I’m indebted to you. I hope to someday return and eat your cooking again.” 

Once Gin has left and the evidence has been thrown overboard (he’d  _ never  _ hear the end of it from the old man if he found out) all that remains is Sanji, the man that calls himself his soulmate, and the awkward, weighty space created by the vocalization of his dream. 

“You’re pretty,” Luffy says. 

“What? No. Don’t—” Sanji makes a frustrated sound into his hands. “Listen. We cannot be…” he gestures vaguely at the space between them, words failing him. “I can’t join your crew, I can’t be your soulmate. You and your crew should go.” 

Luffy frowns and jumps off the railing, coming to stand just a few steps away. “I’m not gonna’ give up on you that easy,” Luffy tells him. 

He heads inside a few moments later when the voice of the shitty old geezer shouts for his new errand boy. 

Sanji stays out for a few more minutes, lighting up once again with gloved fingers that resolutely  _ do not shake.  _

(Maybe, just maybe, part of him doesn’t  _ want  _ Luffy to give up.)

* * *

A lot of things happen at once. Don Kreig arrives at the Baratie followed closely by a man that makes the shitty marimo-head— _(Zoro has your mark, do you have his, too?) —_ turn mad and suicidal, leading him to charge into a fight he cannot win. 

"Scars on the back are a swordsman's shame!" the living Algae declares, spreading his arms wide to accept a fatal blow and smiling with blood on his teeth. Something about the words makes Sanji shiver. At his side, Luffy's knuckles go white across the railing of the floating restaurant's deck. Sanji thinks he's going to intervene—they're soulmates, after all, and that shitty idiot is about to get himself killed—but he just... _doesn't._

Sanji shouts when Zoro goes down. 

An oath is exchanged with the man's white sword extended high into the air. Luffy's eyes are wet when he answers Zoro's desperate, sobbed promise. 

_ (How could I fit there, between them? How could I ever possibly—) _

But then another fight is still waiting at his doorstep and Sanji intends to defend the shitty old man's dream to his last breath. 

The next time Sanji even has a chance to breathe, once the battle is settled, the restaurant is saved, and tearful goodbyes are had, he’s on his way to an island called Cocoyashi with Luffy. They're going to rescue Nami, who apparently just stole from Luffy, but also, Luffy adamantly insists, needs rescuing. Which, alright. Sanji’s not going to pass up an opportunity to rescue a beautiful lady. 

He does manage to give Luffy a good kick in the shins for looking so smug about everything, though. 

“We’re still not soulmates or anything, shitty-rubber. Don’t get ahead of yourself.” 

“Shi shi shi, Sanji’s funny.”

* * *

Zoro is single-handedly the most  _ infuriating  _ person in the world. Not only is he rude to the gorgeous Nami-swan, not only is his ridiculous hair an affront to any and all semblance of decency, and not only is he a muscle-head that does nothing but grunt and sweat and train all day— 

He is supposed to be one of Sanji’s  _ soulmates.  _

And that is just  _ not okay.  _

They don’t talk about it. They never talk about it. Zoro doesn’t ask to see his mark on Sanji and Sanji never offers. The only thing that really even confirmed what Luffy had said that very first day was the fact that the idiot swordsman spends ninety-percent of the time walking around the ship shirtless. 

And, well. 

Sanji’s seen his mark on Luffy. (Not that he  _ asked.  _ Or that he  _ wanted to.  _ It was unavoidable, really. It’s on Luffy’s  _ stomach.  _ And it really was just a glance. Not long enough to study it. But the burst of color and the pattern and. Well.)

On Zoro’s front is a massive version of the mark on Sanji’s hand. The fact that, just an hour after meeting Zoro, the man was violently bisected by an equally psychotic man in a feather hat across that mark did nothing to dissuade from it’s undeniable beauty. Now, a jagged scar cuts diagonally through the sun, puckered skin a gothic punctuation to the brilliant colors. 

(Sanji has seen Luffy napping on Zoro’s bare chest, drooling right over the mark that designates Zoro as  _ his.  _ It does  _ not  _ make his insides twist in unbearable ways.) 

And on Zoro’s back— 

_ (Scars on the back are a swordsman's shame,  _ he had said that day, surrendering his chest to the blade of Dracule Mihawk, and Sanji didn’t even know—how could he have  _ known?)  _

In the center of the Marimo’s back is the same mark that adorns Luffy’s stomach. A blue nautilus shell. 

(On Sanji’s own leg, the mark that used-to-be has bloomed into color, leaving the mess of scar tissue and shiny burn-marked skin flecked with red and splashes of white. It almost looks like a fresh wound with the way that the red and splotchy white patches, damaged far beyond recognition, twist among his ragged flesh.) 

And isn’t it ironic, that his mark _mars_ Zoro’s back in the most shameful way while Zoro’s own mark on his skin is nothing but a scar? A testament to his own damage? 

_ Scars on the swordsman's back…  _ it’s only fair that Sanji carries Zoro’s mark as a scar on his own skin, isn’t it?

(Every time he catches a glimpse of it, Sanji pretends that it doesn’t make him hate himself just a little bit more.)

There is a light-blue ribbon curled around Usopp’s left ear—the mark of his girl back home, Kaya, who is waiting for him and gifted them the  _ Merry Go.  _ Nami bears a single, elegant peacock feather on her ankle etched in simple black; an unrealized mark. 

The heart on Sanji’s chest remains black, just as Luffy’s and Zoro’s do. 

(Maybe, just maybe, it will belong to a lady just as beautiful as Nami-swan.) 

( _ Maybe it’ll be someone I can lov—)  _

* * *

“Get the fuck out of my kitchen, Marimo,” Sanji growls over his shoulder. The pan on the stove sizzles with tonight’s stir fry vegetables. 

Zoro merely grunts. Out of the corner of his eye, Sanji catches him, shirtless and sweaty and absolutely  _ disgusting  _ (absolutely not even the slightest bit attractive at all, nope, definitely not)  digging in his fridge for the pitcher of water. Even though it’s sitting right on the door of the fridge, the  _ moss brained idiot  _ can’t seem to find it. 

“It’s right there, shit-for-brains.” God, how Sanji just wants to _kill_ this man sometimes. 

Zoro turns to send him a withering glare, but the expression dies on his face. 

In a heartbeat’s time, Zoro lunges for him, getting a (surprisingly gentle) hand clasped around his wrist and tilting Sanji’s head from side to side. His expression is wholly inscrutable. 

“What the fuck! Get off me!” Sanji yelps, lashing out with a swift kick to Zoro’s knees. ( _What the fuck are you doing? Stop touching me like that, stop looking at me like that, stop, stop, stop because I can't handle it—)_

“You’re crying,” Zoro says in a low growl. He’s never seen this expression on the Marimo’s face before. The only word for it is  _ constipated.  _

Sanji freezes. Touches his cheeks. 

And he promptly doubles over laughing.

“Explain, Cook,” Zoro hisses, squeezing Sanji’s wrist once, just below where his gloves begin, in a pointed message to hurry it up.  _ Oh,  _ and the fact that it’s  _ Zoro  _ who is worried about him is just  _ priceless  _ and makes the whole thing a million times more  _ hilarious.  _

“Onions, Marimo. I was cutting red onions for dinner. They make your eyes water. There’s an enzyme that they produce that makes you cry.” He shrugs out of Zoro’s touch. “I’m fine.” 

A moment of awkward silence passes between them. On the stove, the vegetables sizzle. They don’t do  _ this— _ care about each other. Their relationship is wholly antagonistic. They have a healthy rivalry, even. The moss-head pisses him off to no end. He’s sure he does the same. (And sometimes he can’t  _ breathe  _ through the guilt that hits him when he looks at the other man, or through the staggering weight of the man's utter strength and the allure of it—) 

But they don’t… care. Not like this. 

It is unbearable when Zoro raises his hand like he’s going to touch him again. He seems to think better of it and drops his arm back to his side. A rare thoughtful expression passes over his face. Something _twists_ inside of Sanji's chest.

“Cook. I don’t…” He stops and stares intensely at the floor. “It doesn’t have to mean anything, you know. They’re just… marks.” 

_ Oh.  _

Zoro touches a hand to his shoulder briefly when he leaves the galley. It takes all Sanji’s willpower not to shrug it off, not to flinch. After a moment, he returns to the meal on the stove. 

_ He doesn’t want you.  _

Not that Sanji had particularly _wanted_ him _(liar, you fucking liar, you want him so bad you can't hardly even cope with it—)_ , but. It’s no little thing… to be rejected by a soulmate. Even one that is perhaps the most brutish, ill-mannered asshole of a _man_ to ever live. 

Perhaps what Germa did to Zoro’s mark on his skin really  _ did  _ do something to damage the bond between them. 

_ (I couldn't protect you—)  _

This time, when his eyes burn with tears, it has nothing to do with the onions.

* * *

Nami meets her soulmate almost as soon as they enter the Grand Line. Princess Nefertari Vivi is a force of nature that turns the peacock feather on Nami’s ankle into brilliant shades of blue, green, and gold. Their connection is as undeniable as anything that has ever been written of in storybooks. 

On Vivi’s wrist sits a beautiful compass rose in fiery shades of orange, red, and bronze. The colors Nami breathes into Vivi’s mark are so vivid that, when the light strikes in just the right way, you could almost mistake the mark on her arm for a real log-pose. They are everything Sanji has ever wanted for himself. 

Just after the mess that is Little Garden, Nami finds him in the early hours of the morning beginning preparations for breakfast. 

He isn’t quick enough to react to her presence. In moments of solitude, usually during early morning or late night hours spent cleaning up after or preparing for the next meal, Sanji will remove his gloves. Nami takes him by surprise and opens with the kind of cutting, blunt honesty he loves her for. 

“You’re one of Luffy and Zoro’s soulmates, aren’t you?” 

Sanji nearly swallows his tongue. Nami-swan is so clever. He never should have expected any less from her. 

“Would you like some tea, Nami-swan? Some coffee, maybe?” He replies. Sanji can feel her keen eyes on the exposed skin of his hand. Is she wondering where Zoro’s mark is? 

“Coffee, I think. We’re approaching a winter island. I could use something warm, thank you, Sanji-kun.” Her smile is gentle when he passes over a mug with just the right amount of cream and sugar to balance the coffee’s bitter taste. “Sit with me please, Sanji-kun.”

“How could I refuse, my sweet?” She offers him another one of those private little smiles as he takes the seat opposite her at the table. 

“I’m correct, right? About Luffy and Zoro?” Nami says. Sanji swallows. Nods. He can be nothing but wholly honest, with her. She hums, appraising. “May I?” She gestures subtly to his uncovered hands. 

Wordlessly, Sanji allows her to tug his hands into her own. She holds them gently across the table and squeezes when a subtle yet undeniable shiver passes through him. It’s not often that Sanji is touched like this. (It's not often that he is touched at all. He’s very careful about that. But with Nami… Nami can be an exception.) 

“Sanji-kun. You deserve all the happiness in the world,” Nami says, her voice as smooth and gentle as honey. 

“Nami—”

“I’m not done yet,” She interjects, though not unkindly. “I’ve hardly known Vivi for a full week but…” The smile that overcomes her face is nothing short of absolutely breathtaking. “I can’t imagine having her right there and knowing she was my soulmate and not… not acting on it. I had always told myself that I couldn’t have a soulmate. Not… not with the things that I had done. The life that I had lived. But I saw Vivi and I just  _ knew.  _ None of that mattered. It had never mattered at all.

“And even before I thought that way, I didn’t know that soulmates could be anything but, well. A man and a woman. Bellemere-san set me straight.” A fond smile crosses her face. “Soulmate marks are expressions of love. And love doesn’t just look like one thing. Hell, Luffy’s got  _ three marks.  _ My soulmate is a woman. A  _ princess,  _ even.” She chuckles to herself, a sound that Sanji can’t really discern. It doesn’t feel self-deprecating. Maybe just fond, again. 

“I know we aren’t the same people, Sanji-kun. And I can’t pretend to understand everything that you do. But I couldn’t live with myself if I never said anything. So I’ll say it again. You deserve all the happiness in the world.” She squeezes his hands tight in her own. “Do you hear me, Sanji-kun? Because I will increase your debt if you’re just placating me, here. I need you to know. You  _ deserve _ to be happy.” 

He hardly recognizes his own voice when he replies. “Yes, Nami. I hear you.” 

“Good.” She releases his hands with one final squeeze. The coffee has cooled enough to drink. Gracefully, she stands, mug clasped in her hands. 

“Nami-swan?” 

“Yeah?”

“... Congratulations. You and Vivi-chan are the most beautiful couple I have ever seen. You… you deserve happiness, too.” The words ache with their sincerity, drawn out of him as tight as a quiver on a bow. 

The smile Nami awards him with is nearly blinding. “Isn’t she  _ amazing?”  _ And with one more private little grin, she slips out of the galley. 

* * *

That very same day, Nami falls gravely ill. 

* * *

On Drum Island, they acquire a doctor. 

On Drum Island, Sanji comes to a realization. 

He takes the force of an avalanche, for Luffy. And Luffy carries his unconscious, broken body up a mountain-side. When he wakes in an unfamiliar place riddled with wholly unfamiliar, agonizing pains, the only words on his tongue are  _ I love you.  _

_ I’m so glad I didn’t die, because I think I love you.  _

* * *

They save a nation. They leave a nakama behind at her request, though it tears them all up inside to do it. Nami moves like a ghost around the Merry for a few days, her heartbreak tight and impenetrable like armor around her. 

They acquire a new nakama. The beautiful and mysterious Robin-chan. She takes her coffee black and always savors every drop. There’s always a book or two in her hands and always a reserved little smile on her face for Luffy and Chopper. Always a pleasant “thank you” on her lips for each and every snack, drink, and meal Sanji serves her. At first, he wonders if the black heart on a string emblazoned on his chest belongs to her. 

It would be fitting, that. 

It doesn’t. 

He loves her anyways. 

* * *

Luffy and Zoro are perfect for each other. Captain and First-mate. Iron will and steel swords. Sanji's always known this, but in Skypeia, the truth of it is impossible to ignore. They hardly have to speak for the other to understand what they mean. For all that both of them are stupid beyond belief, when they are together they almost make up one whole passably intelligent human. 

Playing on the sky-island's beach, Sanji catches a glimpse of the two trading heated kisses in the sand (or clouds, really). While Nami shouts at the two about _rules_ and _decency,_ Sanji occupies himself with Chopper, lest he say something he'll later regret. 

In the beautiful angel Conis-chan's home, when the sound-dial begins to crackle out a lovely tune, Luffy surges to his feet and pulls Zoro into his arms, as easy as anything. Although Luffy steps on the Marimo's toes and they can't seem to move to the music's sedate and gentle beat, they look at each other like they are the only other person in the world that matters. 

Luffy rests his head on Zoro's chest while they sway (re: trip) together around Conis' living room. He says something too quiet to hear and pulls a rare, genuine laugh out of Zoro. (The sound aches like Sanji is getting stabbed. It burns like the sizzle of his own flesh, killing the bond that _could have been_ between them. If Sanji wasn't weak, if he wasn't a failure, if he wasn't _straight_... Luffy's easy smile and gentle hands threatens to steal a sob from his lungs.)

He tightens his hands into fists enough that the leather of his gloves creaks with the strain. 

Of course, then, it is easy to take lightning for them. To take lightning for _any of them —_any of his nakama—not just the two that he's desperately, hopelessly in love with. 

Compared to the other kind of pain, lightning is _easy._

_(You deserve happiness, Sanji-kun.)_

He stares out at the massive bonfire that marks their victory against Enel, false god of the sky kingdom. Luffy and Zoro's silhouettes swing around each other wildly in the firelight, drunk and giddy and laughing like they'll never get the chance to party this hard again. Nami doesn't even scold them for kissing, not even when Luffy crawls into Zoro's lap and slides a hand down the other man's pants. 

_(You deserve happiness.)_

"I'm trying, Nami-san," he whispers to no one but himself. 

The fire rages on. 

* * *

Some days are harder than others, in his head. 

On an unremarkable morning in between the G-8 marine base and whatever will meet them next on the sea, Sanji wakes up  _ shaking.  _

His brothers taunt him in his nightmares. The impressions of their punches and bruising kicks feel like they’ve never truly left him. He knows logically that the bruises and aches he feels are a result of their last adventure in Skypeia. He  _ knows  _ this. But some part of his brain does  _ not.  _

Some part of his brain whispers  _ failure  _ and believes it. 

He stumbles, bleary and shaking out of his hammock long before the sun rises. Sanji makes it into the bathroom just in time to dry-heave into the toilet, nothing but painful shudders and aches rolling through him. Washing his face is a challenge. Usually, he uses a headband to hold his bangs back so that he doesn’t get his hair wet. Today, he can’t bear the sight of his full face. Not those fucking _eyebrows_ that make him so painfully similar to his brothers. 

Not today. 

He makes it through a full pack of cigarettes before the sun is even up. Another disappears over the course of breakfast. At this rate, he'll exhaust his whole supply before the day is up. He cooks an extravagant meal to distract from the fact that he isn’t eating—can’t make himself eat, right now. Not with memories of the Rock lurking so close and the aching, gnawing paranoia that he should save the food for later creeping up on him, just in case the kitchen staff forget to bring him provisions down to the dungeon again. 

He stumbles through the day, feeling like someone took his brain and shifted it five inches outside of his head. Anxiety is a palpable monster that lurks in his shadow. Even dredging up the energy to bicker with the Marimo feels like it’s a herculean task. 

_ (It doesn’t have to mean anything. They’re just marks.) _

He doesn't _want you._

Chopper finds him in the bathroom struggling to remember how to breathe just after lunch. The little doctor coaxes him back to reality and removes his hands from his hair with a tenderness so sincere that there are tears in his eyes. He coaches him through an exercise that makes being alive feel a little bit more bearable— _ tell me five things you see, Sanji. Four things you hear. Good, now three things you smell— _ and says a lot about  _ panic attacks, anxiety disorders, stress,  _ and  _ post traumatic stress disorder  _ that Sanji really doesn’t have the brain-power to focus on. 

Chopper swears not to tell anyone else and Sanji believes him, so it comes as a sincere surprise when Luffy volunteers for dish duty that night and looks at him like he can see every broken little part that sits cold and dead inside Sanji’s soul. 

They do the dishes to a soundtrack of Luffy’s awful, off-key humming. He can’t seem to focus on a single damn song for more than thirty seconds and they must work their way through Luffy’s entire shitty repertoire of sea shanties by the time everything is dry and its proper place. This would usually drive him _insane,_ but all he can think about is the parting kiss Zoro dropped onto Luffy's cheek after the meal was over, and the desperate, awful little craving that lives inside of him. 

And when everything is done, Luffy turns to him and just— 

Pulls him into a hug. 

It’s not how Luffy usually hugs the crew. There is no distant shout of  _ gomu-gomu-no-slingshot  _ and there is no grand collision that takes all the breath out of him at once and sends him hurtling overboard into the sea. Instead, there are only Luffy’s arms, wrapped tight around his torso, and Luffy’s steady breathing against the bare skin of his neck.

_ H _ _ e’s standing on his toes, _ Sanji realizes,  because he knows Luffy isn’t tall enough for his mouth to reach his neck so easily. Luffy simply hums and tucks his chin over Sanji’s shoulder, and then, well. Sanji stops thinking anything at all. 

_ Surely this is alright?  _

Slowly, he returns the embrace, tentatively wrapping his arms around Luffy and letting his neck relax so that their heads touch. 

_ Surely I’m allowed even this?  _

Luffy makes a contented little sound and knocks their skulls gently together. He squeezes Sanji just a little bit tighter and makes not a single move to pull away. 

_ How long has it been since I’ve been held like this?  _

In a sudden helpless moment, his legs betray him. 

_ Have I ever been held like this?  _

He lands on the floor, flat on his ass, with Luffy still clinging to him like he never intends to let go. Eventually, Luffy shuffles them a bit, and the next time Sanji comes back to himself, he’s sitting on the floor, back against the wall, with Luffy planted in his lap, still hugging him. 

_ “Luffy—”  _ Sanji breathes, because there’s nothing to say but that, and the words fail him anyways so that only a croaking parody of his captain’s name escapes his lips. 

Luffy pulls back just far enough to look him in the eyes. 

_ I love you, please, help me, because I love you and I can’t—  _

Kindness pours off of him like waves, like light, like rays of sunshine and Sanji is helpless to the warmth of it. It takes him like a storm. 

_ I shouldn’t, I can’t, I’m not enough. Please, help me because I love you and—  _

When it breaks, it breaks like a dam. 

He sobs into the crook of Luffy’s neck, the skin there warm and smelling faintly of the sea. He sobs like he hasn’t let himself sob in ages—not since he was a child—and holds Luffy as tightly to his chest as he can. Each gut-wrenching cry that tears from his mouth gets lost against Luffy’s skin, swallowed by the all encompassing steadiness of his weight in Sanji’s arms. 

_ Help me because I can’t  _

(Usopp is on watch tonight, he’s in the crow’s nest so he most definitely can’t see. No one comes in here after the dishes are done so surely… surely this is safe?)

_ I can’t breathe and I know I’m not _

(What a treat, to hold and be held like this, in arms that have broken the bodies of tyrants.)

_ I know I’m not worthy of this but, gods help me, I love you so much so please _

Luffy says nothing while he sobs. Doesn’t even make a sound. Sanji isn’t sure what this means but for the moment, he’s willing to take it as a gift because he’s certain that if Luffy tried to say  _ anything,  _ he’d just cry harder. 

_ Please  _

Eventually, there are no more tears in him left to cry. When his shuddering sobs turn to subdued hiccups and eventually, to steady breathing, Luffy pulls away.

It hurts like getting shot— _ like getting part of you burned off while a man that you used to call father watches impassively— _ but Luffy—

Doesn’t go anywhere. 

He smiles at Sanji, this soft little thing that can only be read as  _ adoring _ , and a hand leaves his waist to touch his cheek with a gentleness that he never knew Luffy could have. It hurts—he can’t bear to see that in his eyes—so he leans forward, resting his head on Luffy’s chest so he doesn’t have to  _ see.  _

A hand combs steadily through his hair.  __

And Sanji just…  _ breathes.  _

Some time later, Luffy rearranges them ever-so-slightly. With a heart-breaking gentleness, he peels Sanji’s gloves off of his hands, bearing the sun-mark. Their fingers fit together like interlocking puzzle pieces. Together, hand-over-hand, Luffy unbuttons his own shirt.

And when _his_ mark is bared—a beautiful, curving nautilus, colored in the blues of a tropical ocean and filled with swirls of color like fish moving beneath the surface of the shallows—Luffy places Sanji’s hand over it, skin to skin.

“Mine,” Luffy says in the scant space between them. 

And it feels like coming home. 

* * *

They sleep in the galley that night on the spare futon Sanji uses on the handful of occasions where he goes straight from watch to preparing breakfast. Luffy strips down to just his shorts and peels Sanji’s dress shirt off of him with gentle, patient hands that linger on the threaded heart suspended just above where Sanji’s own heart beats in his chest. 

Sanji always leaves a spare pair of pajama pants with the futon and with a heavy dose of  _ fuck it, tonight has already been full of enough embarrassments to last me a lifetime,  _ Sanji shucks his pants and suddenly the scars on his leg are bare. 

It’s like all the air gets sucked out of the room. 

(Sanji can’t get the pants on fast enough.)

But Luffy, for all his apparent lack of grace, only asks him one thing. 

“Who?” his Captain asks in a voice that is as rigid and unwavering as the blade of Zoro’s swords. 

(Guiltily, Sanji is grateful that it is Luffy here and not Zoro. He... he can't imagine ever letting Zoro see his deepest shame.)

Sanji reaches out blindly and finds Luffy’s hand already waiting there for him. Their fingers tangle together and the sensation is just as overwhelmingly  _ good  _ as it was that very first time back on the Baratie. The warmth of their hands together gives him the strength to answer. 

“No one that matters anymore.” 

_ (Vinsmoke Judge has not been my father for many, many years.)  _

Dry, chapped lips flutter fleetingly across Sanji’s knuckles. Achingly tender. “Okay,” Luffy says. 

And they melt together onto the thin futon, dropping off to sleep as easily as breathing.

* * *

In the morning, it is Zoro that finds them. His expression is unreadable and he says nothing. Sanji can feel Luffy’s keen eyes flit between the two of them with all the precision of a hawk. 

Blissfully, (surprisingly) even _he_ says nothing.

Luffy only drops a kiss onto the exposed skin of Sanji’s shoulder and scrambles eagerly out of bed, shouting demands for  _ breakfast, Sanji! I want bacon!  _

* * *

“Are you worried about me, Marimo?” ekes out of him and into the little den-den mushi clutched in his hand. Around him, the sea-train roars as it chugs along the tracks. Somewhere on this train, Robin is a prisoner. The answer doesn’t really matter, but something in Sanji  _ needs  _ to know. 

“Tch. Never, shitty cook.” A pause. “Don’t die.” 

Maybe Zoro doesn’t want him.  _ But. _

How could Sanji refuse an order like that? 

* * *

There is Enies Lobby and there is the death of the Merry. They spend some time in Water-7, after all is said and done, waiting for the construction on their new ship to be completed. Luffy sleeps for days. When he wakes, he grabs for Zoro and Sanji in-turn. 

Zoro and Luffy spend endless, awful minutes kissing in front of the whole crew.

“Rule one!” Nami gripes, but does not move to separate the two. Sanji just shuffles off to the side and. Well. Waits for his turn. 

* * *

_ Bartholomew Kuma. _

Sanji puts aside his aching  _ everything  _ and staggers to his feet among the rubble. 

Zoro is already up, already shouting at the warlord. 

_ He wants Luffy’s head.  _

“Zoro,” Sanji begins, and doesn’t quite know what else to say. He takes his gloves off one after the other. Kuma and Zoro wait for him to continue. He searches for his cigarettes and finds that they are gone, lost to the rubble somewhere.  _ Shit.  _

_ A last smoke would have been nice.  _

“Tell the rest of the crew,” his breath rasps in and out, his punctured lung and broken ribs _screaming,_ “that they’ll need to find a new cook.” 

He can’t bear to look back, to look Zoro in the eyes (this man that he failed from his very earliest days, a stain on his swordsman's back and a weakling that couldn't protect _—_ ) or the rest of the crew that has always deserved so much more than him. 

“And… tell Luffy,” his voice cracks, but does not break or waver. “Tell him—” 

The blow that Zoro deals to his ribs with the hilt of his most cherished blade hurts even more than a million lightning strikes. The pain rolls through him like a tectonic shift and consciousness begins to slip away, no matter how hard he fights for it. He clutches at Zoro’s arm, shaking in turn with rage and with pain. His pants are torn. His legs are bare. Zoro’s eyes flicker down to his leg, to his _scars,_ and back to his face, his expression inscrutable. 

“B-bastard,” is all that he can manage before darkness swoops in. 

* * *

_ Find him, find him, find him _

Every single inch of Sanji's body protests even the slightest movement, but he pushes on.  Behind him, he hears Nami cry out. Usopp, too. 

_ Find him, find him _

A feeling, a compulsion.  _ This way,  _ part of him says. He listens, frantic. The mark on his leg burns like it’s on fire. And he knows, intimately, what that feeling is. 

_ Find him find him find  _

Blood.

Blood on the ground. 

And  _ there— _ standing still. Arms crossed. Covered in the greatest amount of blood Sanji has ever seen in his entire life. 

He thinks he screams. 

(He knows he must scream.)

_ “Zoro!”  _

His legs carry him the distance required and his hands flutter utterly useless around Zoro’s blood-soaked shoulders. 

“Zoro, please. What  _ happened?”  _

_ “N-nothing.”  _

_ I love you, I love you, it doesn’t matter if you don’t want me, just live long enough for me to say it, you fucking bastard— _

_ “Nothing at all.”  _

Zoro collapses like a puppet with his strings cut. Sanji catches him, lowers him carefully to the ground, feels bone scrape against bone with every movement. A sob catches somewhere in his chest. 

_ (Useless. Helpless. Failure. It should have been you.) _

And he screams for help with all the air left in his lungs. 

_ “LUFFY!”  _


	4. Law

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Law is a slow-acting poison, a walking dead man. A puppet caught in a web of fucking strings—caught up in a cage of them—and he’ll never be free, not in any way that matters, not in a way which also means his survival. 
> 
> But yet. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please take this story away from me. We are 70+ pages and counting. Also, I added another chapter. 
> 
> TW for detailed description of a panic attack in the post Punk-Hazard scene.

There is an idea behind Law’s tattoos. 

Bepo asks about them one of those very first nights when it is just them and nothing but the silence made of all the things they don’t want to say. Bepo is so warm. Blessedly so. His voice has become oddly comforting, even in the short time they’ve known each other. It lilts and grumbles just  _ so _ when he asks,

“Are those the soulmate marks humans have?” He points one enormous paw at the matching gears that adorn Law’s forearms and the symbols on his wrists. 

“No,” Law says, easy as breathing. “Just tattoos.” 

Bepo hums—an odd sound for a bear to make, but a sound Bepo makes nonetheless. “Do you have soulmate marks?” 

Law pauses to take a few large swallows out of the bottle of booze he’s been nursing all night. 

“Yes,” he replies, only when the alcohol has burned his throat enough that he can’t taste the word. 

“So why tattoos, then?” Bepo blinks at him, lazy and slow but with infinite care. 

“I don’t believe in fate.” Another drink that burns like scorching fire. “And there are some people and some things worth carrying on your skin more than soulmates.” 

Bepo’s fur is so warm and so soft when Law gets a little drunker than he’d like to admit and leans up against his side. He’s just drunk  _ enough  _ to be able to admit that he’s just turned eighteen. It’s his  _ birthday  _ today.

“Happy birthday, Captain,” Bepo replies, aching with sincerity. He must know there’s something profound in this because he doesn’t make any needless or unwelcome fuss about it. In fact, Bepo is quiet after that. Waiting. 

Right there, in the dank, dark little corner of this dank, dark little bar, Law shrugs off his sweatshirt to reveal the bulk of the art on his chest —the hearts on his chest and shoulders concealed under his clothing, the uncolored sun rising from his navel, the hilt bindings weaving down the underside of his right bicep, pressed against the intimate skin of his ribs when he is bare. 

Law places his own hand flat over the large, barbed heart that spans his chest. 

“It is thanks to Cora-san that I get to have a birthday. He died so that I could live.” 

There is a long, heavy pause. Bepo’s voice is just so fucking  _ sincere _ when he says, “Thank you, Cora-san.”

“I don’t believe in fate,” Law says. “But I did believe in him.”

* * *

When Law dies, only a child and choking on the scent of burning bodies, stealing away from the wreckage of Flevance under a mound of ash-white corpses,  _ nothing _ makes sense. 

The nuns at the church had always told him that things happen for a reason. Staring up at an unforgiving night sky, devoid of any merciful hand to save him or his family (already dead—his parents riddled so thoroughly with bullets that whole  _ chunks _ of them were missing, and then his sister, shut up in a closet and told to wait and _ burning _ to death and all his fault,  _ all his fault) _ —Law thinks this must be complete and utter  _ bullshit.  _

Just like how sister Agnes had said the marines would be coming to save the children. 

_ Lies.  _

Law fades in and out of awareness, his eidetic memory failing him for the first time in his (short) life. Perhaps it is a blessing. He remembers getting into the cart of bodies. He remembers the procession of carts marching towards the massive bonfires just outside of town. He remembers the white hazmat suits the government officials wore. The mark of the seagull. 

(The laughter of the marines as they loot the bodies before burning them; collecting money, jewelry, and anything else of value.)

Law comes back to himself, their laughter echoing like church bells in his ears, hunkered in a room he doesn’t recognize in what can only be the belly of a marine ship. 

Either he will be brought away from this place—a ghost snuck onto a ship—or he will be caught by the marines and burned, just like the rest of Flevance.

Both possibilities lead to the same outcome.  _ Death if I get caught.  _

Law unclenches his shaking hands from where they are clasped around his knees. He examines the swirling shell soulmark etched in lines of black on his left palm in the dim illumination provided by the not-so-distant fires. The stark black mark is interrupted by a single, large white splotch. 

_ Death if I escape.  _

Through a small break in the boards of the docked ship, Law can watch the giant fires roar out into the night. It is a mass funeral-pyre and he is the only one in attendance. 

(When Law’s grandmother died of pneumonia last winter, they had a beautiful funeral for her at the town cathedral. Many of his father’s patients came to show support to their family. Much of the town was there, really. There was beautiful piano music. Law remembers the itching discomfort of the starched collar he had worn that day.)

There are no somber people in suits. There is no music. There is no priest to whisper prayers over a casket. There are no caskets at all. There is only Law—good as dead already.  _ Practically dead already.  _

Even as the ship draws away from Flevance, the only home Law has ever known, he does not look away. He keeps his eyes on the fire until it is not even a speck of light on the vast horizon. 

He will bear witness. The sole attendant to the funeral of a whole city. 

Law does not pray for the dead, even though he knows how.  _ (Things don’t happen for a reason.)  _

As the fires fade out of his view, nothing but great plumes of smoke against the dark night sky, he thinks of Lammy. He thinks of her soft hair, of her smile, of the strawberry icecream she always picked when father sent them to the corner store with change for candy. 

_ Dead.  _

He thinks of his parents. His mother’s (awful) cooking, his father’s proud smile and their voices taking turns reading story books to him when he was little. Law gathers up the memories of their warmth, their love, their easy affection for their children and for each other as soulmates and partners in everything. 

_ Dead.  _

For a moment, Law holds onto these things as tight as he can manage. He holds them to his heart so closely that they hurt. He holds them like he’ll never let go. 

And then. He does. 

* * *

“What the hell is a kid like you doing playing with knives and bombs, huh?” Diamante asks. He looks down at Law as if Law isn’t worth the fucking  _ breath  _ it is taking him to ask. 

In the little room where the youngest of the Doflamingo family have been put up for the night, Baby Five and Buffalo are attempting to get comfortable on the single, narrow bed. Diamante lingers by the door, watching them under Doflamingo’s instruction, his arms crossed and his eyes disdainful. He reeks strongly of patchouli and cigar smoke. 

“What do you mean, ‘a kid like me’?” Law says. He quickly casts his dirtied shirt aside for a new one, buttoning it up as fast as his fingers will move. There are very few things that Law hates more than being unclothed, especially when there are people around. 

(Especially when it’s  _ Buffalo  _ and  _ Baby Five.  _ They always say the  _ stupidest  _ shit.)

Diamante tuts at him. “Don’t play dumb, brat. The  _ marks.  _ You’ve got not one,  _ not two,  _ but _three_ soulmates. Makes me wonder, is all.”

Slowly, Diamante’s mouth twists into a cruel smile. There’s some red lip-stick smeared on one of his teeth, a stark smudge of crimson. 

“Say, kid. Are they  _ dead?  _ Did they die of what you’re going to?” Abruptly, Diamante chuckles, low and evil. “Oh, I bet they did. I bet it made you  _ cruel.  _ Never mind, kid. I think I get it now. I know exactly what a kid like you is doing here.” 

Law  _ burns  _ he is so angry. His rage is his own. It doesn’t belong to his soulmates, dead or alive. How  _ dare  _ Diamante credit this  _ thing  _ Law has become to  _ mere heartbreak?  _

“Piss off,” Law says. 

“Fucking kids…” Diamante mutters. And that’s that. 

* * *

  
  


Penguin and Shachi both have soulmate marks. Penguin’s is realized. Shachi’s is not. 

Law does not ask about their marks but, well. These things tend to come up. Especially on a ship as small as the Polar Tang. Eventually, the two run out of card games to play, and, when Bepo is not forthcoming, they decide that interrupting Law in his quarters while he’s  _ busy _ planning is a good idea. 

The two strong-arm their way in the door and clamber up onto his bed like eager children at a sleepover. It’s ridiculous. 

Law rubs at his temple where a migraine is starting to crop-up.

“This is ridiculous,” he tells them. 

“But Captain,” Shachi whines. “Why won’t you tell us?” 

_ Because it doesn’t matter. _

“You’re ridiculous,” Law says instead. 

“Well  _ my  _ soulmate and I grew up together!” Penguin soldiers on. “We lived in the same village and our parents were friends.” On Penguin’s shoulder lives a vivid purple butterfly. 

_ Lammy liked to imagine that her mark would be a butterfly,  _ Law does not say.  _ She was almost certain it would be,  _ he bites back. It doesn’t matter. 

Because sometimes people are born without marks and sometimes people are born with multiple and sometimes children die with their marks still black and unrealized, burning to death in a wardrobe, hiding from those that would execute them. 

“C’mon, Law. Just tell us which one of your tattoos it is? Bepo wouldn’t give it up.” 

No, he wouldn’t. Because Bepo understands loyalty. And, as a Mink, Bepo knows that soulmate marks aren’t everything. In fact, to the Mink’s, they’re nothing but a fairy-tale oddity belonging to humans that some find romantic and some find creepy. 

“No,” Law repeats, as firm as he can get. “I don’t believe in fate.” 

_ And it wouldn’t matter anyway.  _ He casts a brief glance over at his desk and the plans in-progress that are spread out all across its surface. 

_ Avenge Cora-san. Take down Doflamingo and his empire.  _

_ (He’s practically dead already.)  _

* * *

Law wakes from a dream— _ nightmare— _ where he’s lost in a shallow sea, surrounded by beautiful, mathematically perfect nautilus shells.  __

He wakes up shaking and traces each letter spelled out on his knuckles methodically. 

_ D  _

_ “This is a very special symbol, Law..”  _

_ E  _

_ “How fitting, that life lives on your hands. You’ll make a fine doctor, Law.”  _

_ A _

_ “What’s on this hand is sacred.” _

_ T _

_ The smell of death and the pillars of great fire that arched up into the sky. The cold, unseeing eyes of the bodies in the cart. The laughter of the marines.  _

_ H _

“Avenge Cora-san,” Law whispers. “Take down Doflamingo.” 

* * *

The smell of old, weathered pages in his hands overwhelms all of Law’s senses as he reads. Distantly, he knows his mother is preparing dinner in the very same room. But his mind has been elsewhere all day. 

Ever since Sister Margaret saw the soul-mark on his palm and told him with revent awe, “This is a very special symbol, Law.” Ever since the priest, a wizened old man with a sharp nose and keen eyes said, “What’s on this hand is sacred” and pressed a book into Law’s other. 

> _ Jaques Bernoulli devoted a treatise entitled  _ Spira Mirabilis  _ (wonderful spiral) to a particular type of spiral shape. Jacques was so impressed with the beauty of the curve known as the logarithmic spiral that he asked that this shape, and the motto he assigned to it: “eadem mutato resurgo” (although changed, I rise again the same) be engraved on his tombstone.  _

In the kitchen, Law’s mother nicks her finger with a knife. She hisses out a curse and a curt but good-natured, “Well, a little extra iron never hurt anyone.”

> _ The motto describes a fundamental property unique to the logarithmic spiral—it does not alter its shape as its size increases. This feature is known as self-similarity. Fascinated by this property, Jacques wrote that the logarithmic spiral “may be used as a symbol, either of fortitude and constancy in adversity, or of the human body, which after all its changes, even after death, will be restored to its exact and perfect self. _

“Mom!” Law shouts, jumping up out of his seat and rushing to her over at the kitchen sink with the book clasped in his hands. There, in the margins of the book, labeled  _ Figure 37  _ is a picture of a curving nautilus shell—a  _ sacred spiral— _ right there on the page. 

It is identical to the mark on his hand.

“Incredible,” His mother breathes, smiling at him with all the gentleness in the world. She flips through the book and scans some pages. “Maybe your soulmate is a mathematician,” she suggests, patting the top of his hat affectionately. “Now, go grab your father and tell him dinner is ready.” She pulls a face. “For lack of a better word.”

* * *

Law does not think of his parents often. They are part of another world, another life—one completely lost to him, now.

Instead, Law thinks of Cora-san. He thinks of the gunshot that shattered his world, a silly little smile through bloody lips and cracked teeth, the smell of menthol cigarettes and the press of his hand to the top of Law’s head and— 

Doflamingo. 

Law thinks of  _ Doflamingo. _

* * *

The auction house on the Sabaody Archipelago is one of the most despicable places Law has ever been. If the giant symbol of Doflamingo’s criminal underworld wasn’t enough to make his skin crawl (it is) and if the general display of human depravity around him wasn’t enough to make him itch to punch something (it does), the selling of  _ human beings  _ certainly pushes the place to the very top of that list all on its own. 

There is a not  _ wholly _ unpleasant tingling feeling that is beginning in his stomach, the longer that Law lingers here in this fucked up place. Absently, he goes to itch at the place and that is when it occurs to him what that feeling  _ is.  _

( _ “Well, one day, you’ll just feel it. You’ll feel it and then you’ll know,”  _ Cora-san had said. It was another one of those times that the man was trying to persuade Law that searching for a cure was worth it, another afternoon filled the fear of a new hospital, the stinging rejection of the hospital’s staff and subsequently another evening of burning tears gathering in Law’s eyes as his breath rattled through his sickly lungs. He’d dug his fingers into the feathers of Cora-san’s coat and wailed that “ _ enough was enough already, just let me die!”  _ And Cora-san had smiled at him, ruffled his hair, and said,  _ “There are people waiting for you, Law. The truth of it is on your skin.”)  _

_ No, no, no, no _ — 

He spins in his seat, anxious in a way he rarely lets himself be, searching the myriad of faces in the crowd. A hush and a dull roar swells as the next prospective-slave is brought to the stage—a rarity, a  _ mermaid— _ but Law can hardly pay attention. 

The sun inscribed over his abdomen tingles like a limb that has long been asleep and is just now waking up again, blood and feeling returning to the tissue. 

_ Who?  _ And something in Law is disgusted, absolutely  _ revolted  _ that this is happening  _ here,  _ in this place, because what does that say about the quality of his soul? 

(Doflamingo’s symbol leers down at him from the curtains of the stage, silently mocking him as the crowd roars with a Celestial Dragon’s bid for the mermaid.) 

A portion of the ceiling caves in with a shower of debris and dust. Someone lurches out of the ensuing cloud of rubble and chaos and runs towards the stage before a set of six arms catches him forcibly. A fishman has stopped the guy, and things progress very quickly after that. The crowd murmurs in horror and open disgust. 

A gunshot and the octopus fishman is down, bloodied and dying on the stairs. 

_ And then.  _

Law  _ feels _ him before he sees him. 

There is a change in the atmosphere of the room, some shift that is hard to describe. Later, Law will think  _ haki,  _ but for now, all he can think of is indiscriminate  _ power  _ and  _ rage  _ and  _ grief  _ all in one. The force of it steals his breath from his lungs. 

A boy in a straw hat pulled low over his face— _ Monkey D. Luffy,  _ the functioning part of Law’s brain supplies alongside a bounty number, but he can’t hardly hear it over the sudden rushing of blood in his ears—stalks down the main steps of the auditorium, the rigid line of his narrow, thin shoulders stiff with resolution and so much  _ rage.  _

_ Him,  _ his hind-brain whispers. The tingling, awakening sensation across his abs coalesces into a feeling not unlike a peeling, prickling sunburn as Monkey D. Luffy raises his fist and howls in a wordless expression of  _ fury  _ that reverberates in Law’s very marrow. 

Monkey D. Luffy strikes a Celestial Dragon straight in the face and the auction house is so deathly silent that every single soul in the building can hear the man’s nose  _ snap  _ under the rookie pirate’s fist. 

“Captain?” Bepo nudges him and only then does Law realize his chest is heaving, he’s  _ hyperventilating _ , and he quickly schools himself. 

Absently, Law traces over the spiral shell on the back of his hand. 

_ I thought you’d be first,  _ he doesn’t say. 

But it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t  _ matter  _ how Monkey D. Luffy looks, snarling at a fucking  _ Celestial Dragon of all people  _ and then rushing the stage for the mermaid girl. It doesn’t  _ matter  _ that they share that same initial, that same  _ destiny.  _

(It  _ can’t matter.) _

It doesn’t  _ matter  _ who came first. Law is no less prepared to deny Monkey D. Luffy as he is to deny any of his marks. 

(A bloodied smile and a goofy, yet no less sincere  _ I love you, Law.)  _

He takes a slow, fortifying breath. 

_ (Avenge Cora-san.) _

The auction house clears  _ very  _ quickly after that—especially once the  _ marines  _ begin to mobilize and surround the place—and soon only a handful of players remain. In the ensuing relative quiet, Monkey D. Luffy stands amidst what can only be his crew and, suddenly, without any warning at all, his head snaps to where Law is seated, his eyes wide and his mouth open. 

“You,” Monkey D. Luffy says, eyes fixed on Law. He gasps and exclaims, “So handsome!” and Law… was  _ not  _ expecting that.

“Me?” Law asks out of sheer surprise alone. 

This  _ kid  _ in the strawhat just blinks at him as if he’s being particularly dense by asking. 

“No! The bear! But yes, also you!” And then, to Bepo, “Do you talk?” 

Law feels steam-rolled over and he can’t hardly remember the last time  _ that  _ happened. But, before he can right himself and say anything at all, Dark King Silvers Rayleigh arrives and, well. The marines complicate things from then on out. 

* * *

As much as Law hates to admit it, fighting alongside Strawhat Luffy felt so very…  _ natural. _

In the darkness of his quarters aboard the Polar Tang, Law lies flat on his back in bed and allows himself a bone-deep sigh. 

It does not help. 

( _ “You”,  _ Mugiwara had said so simply, and not a single part of Law believes for one moment that Luffy did not immediately know who they are  _ supposed  _ to be to each other.) 

Law does not intend to go to the bathroom. In fact, he purposefully tells himself that he will  _ not  _ be going to the bathroom to look at the mark across his abs. He will  _ not.  _

(He ends up in front of the bathroom mirror anyways, shrugging out of his jacket with his eyes firmly closed.) 

Gold. 

Law opens his eyes and sees  _ gold  _ splashed across his abdomen, buffeted by rolling blues and soft, hazy pinks. His breath leaves him in a painful, shuddering exhale. 

“Who does he think he is?” Law mutters, overcome by a wash of bitter rage. He’s quick to redress himself before he can pointlessly occupy any more of his time with something he’s long known he cannot have. 

That night, he lies awake in the dark, staring at the ceiling, thinking of Cora-san’s final, bloody smile. 

_ I love you, Law. _

(Surely, this should be enough.)

* * *

Law is almost angry with himself as the clock in his operating theater passes the three hour mark. Beneath his hands, Strawhat Luffy is a mess of bloodied, melted flesh and so much damage it is almost impossible to fathom his survival. 

(That  _ sound  _ that had escaped from him upon the death of Fire-Fist Ace… Law  _ knows  _ and has known that sound since he was a child. The sound of complete and utter  _ loss  _ tearing its way through your body, leaving nothing behind but an agony so complete you can’t hardly stay on your feet any longer…)

Law reaches into Strawhat Luffy’s chest cavity and cups the man’s sluggishly beating heart in his own two hands. 

The clock in the operating theater ticks on. 

It is so very  _ hard  _ to be angry with himself as Law continues to knit tissue back together, to fill a battered, dying body with fresh blood and touch this heart with gentle hands. But the thing is, he  _ is.  _ He is so fucking  _ angry  _ with himself. 

There, right beneath the place where Law has Strawhat’s chest cracked open in order to salvage the burnt mess that’s been made of his internal organs, is  _ sacred geometry.  _

_ Eadem mutato resurgo,  _ Law thinks as he works. Perhaps it’s a sign. A sign that maybe, just maybe, Strawhat will make it.  _ Although changed, I rise again the same.  _

Law cannot bring himself to look at the mark. Nor can he bring himself to look for the one that is bound to be his own, somewhere on Strawhat’s flesh. Law is a surgeon, and a  _ damn good one  _ at that, so his hands do not shake as he works. He thinks of the rarity of triads—three people all bound together as soulmates. He thinks of old scholarship and of philosophy. 

Triads of soulmates are exceptionally rare, but they do happen. But a  _ quadrumvirate _ ? That is completely unheard of. 

And Law knows the sorts of things that are said about  _ triads.  _ Triads are composed of people so  _ broken  _ that they take many hands to piece them back together. Triads are composed of greedy, whorish people that do nothing but  _ want, want, want.  _ Triads have no balance, one is always left heartbroken. 

Law doesn’t put much stock in these saying but  _ fuck.  _

What does it  _ mean _ that Law’s soul is cleaved into  _ fourths?  _

Because he knows that if Strawhat has the sacred geometry— _ so breathtakingly blue, good god, it is so beautiful _ —he must have the third of Law’s marks, too. The hilt binding. 

The clock on the wall ticks on. 

Law watches his hands disappear in and out of Strawhat’s chest cavity, something deep and long-cauterized in his chest  _ aching  _ every time. 

_ You know better,  _ a voice that sounds suspiciously like Doflamingo says. 

Law clenches his jaw and throws himself deeper into his work. 

_ I saved him because he carries that name, “D.”, just as Cora-san saved me,  _ he tells himself over and over again as the minutes continue to bleed into hours and the body beneath his hands gradually comes back together. 

(By the time Law has done all he can for Strawhat Luffy, he has almost managed to convince himself that  _ that  _ is the only reason why.)

* * *

It takes Strawhat hardly any time at all to find Law alone on the shores of Amazon Lily. He sees him approaching from the tree-line, his forehead still dotted with sweat from all the thrashing around he gave himself immediately upon regaining consciousness. The whole crew could hear him screaming from the shore.   


(Jinbei had been the one to go after him. Law quite firmly tells himself that this is for the best.)

But now Strawhat is approaching him, and. Well. 

“You saved me,” is the first thing Strawhat says. He’s standing and Law is sitting, perched on the edge of a rock in what Shachi annoyingly calls his “resting gargoyle pose.” Like this, Strawhat is taller than him, Law’s head rising just to his heavily-bandaged chest. 

“You’re my third,” is the next thing Strawhat says, and Law’s blood chills in his veins, despite his attempt to harden himself against exactly  _ this.  _

“Third?” He repeats, his mouth resolutely disobeying him. A hand subconsciously travels to the mark on his abdomen. 

“Oh!” Strawhat exclaims, and then, just like that, he’s snatched up Law’s hand and is smiling a watery, teary-eyed smile at the black-and-white spiral that adorns it. “Sanji’s mark,” Strawhat says, seemingly to himself, and then begins to  _ slide his thumbs  _ across every line— breathtakingly  _ intimate.  _

(And  _ fuck,  _ how long has it been since Law has been touched by another person? How long has it been since he  _ let  _ someone touch him?) 

Strawhat’s hands on his own feel… they  _ feel so…  _

Law pulls away and Strawhat lets him go without protest. 

“Thank you, Torao. Thank you for saving me,” Strawhat says in a voice achingly tender. 

“It doesn’t mean anything,” Law is quick to say. “We are the captains of rival crews, Mugiwara-ya. I won’t save you again.”

“Yosh. You won’t need to. I’m going to get stronger. To protect the people I love.” His eyes  _ burn  _ when Law looks at him. The message across Strawhat’s face is clear as day. 

_ I count you as a person I love,  _ he is saying. 

Law does not reply. 

After a moment, “Will you stay?” Strawhat asks. 

“No,” he says. “My crew and I are leaving tonight.”

Strawhat hums, a sound to try and cover up a distinct and profound feeling of  _ sadness.  _ Law hears it nonetheless. He very carefully does not react.

_ Walk away, Mugiwara. Walk away.  _

A body settles next to him, pressed nearly flush to his side on the rock. 

“O-oi,” he growls, going to protest when— 

Strawhat’s head drops onto his shoulder. A hand takes up his own, fingers intertwining as if this is the most natural progression of things to ever occur. A little sound—a hitch of breath. Wetness. 

_ He’s crying.  _

A face hot and wet with tears presses as gentle as anything into the bare skin of Law’s neck and he finds himself bearing all of Strawhat’s weight as he weeps. He’s clutching Law like he’s the only thing left in the world. Ragged, hitching sobs are coming soft and half-stifled into the scant space between them. 

_ Push him away,  _ that familiar and cruel voice whispers.  _ You can’t afford distractions—you know better than this. There’s nothing for him, here. You’re dead already, Law. Push him away. _

Strawhat squeezes his hand. 

And, just for a moment, Law squeezes back. 

_ I held your heart in my hands,  _ Law doesn’t say.  _ I can’t stop thinking about how warm it was, even as you were dying. I think about it every night. I think about all the things I cannot have and it is all your fault that it hurts. It was never supposed to hurt this much.  _

He says nothing and stares at their feet, Strawhat’s resting just-so against his own, sitting pressed-together as they are. There’s something dark on one of Strawhat’s ankles—a bug or something— 

_ A heart.  _

_ Oh.  _

Law’s soulmate mark rests on Luffy’s ankle, just grazing the top of his foot. It is a dark, cartoon heart, stylized not unlike the ones Law carries as tattoos. It is such a dark purple that it is nearly black. Only the light of the late evening sun betrays it as the rich color it is: deep purple with strong crimson undertones. It dangles from a string—one thin, dark line. 

And how fucking  _ cruel  _ is that? Doflamingo follows him even here, even into this moment that Law never could have fathomed. What a cosmic fucking  _ joke  _ for his mark—the shape and symbol of Law’s very  _ soul— _ to bear that bastard’s influence. 

It would be cruel to have him. To have this man.  _ Monkey D. Luffy.  _ It would be cruel to have the others, too. ( _ Sanji,  _ Luffy had said. The Strawhat Pirate’s cook. And the other. Whoever they are.)

Law is a slow-acting poison, a walking dead man. A  _ puppet  _ caught in a web of  _ fucking strings— _ caught up in a  _ cage of them  _ and he’ll never be free, not in any way that matters, not in a way which also means his  _ survival.  _

But yet. 

Monkey D. Luffy is weeping against his shoulder, clutching his hand like Law is the only other person left in the world and Law…  _ wants.  _

He lets go of Strawhat’s hand and before he has time to recoil with a perceived rejection, Law winds an arm around his shoulder, pulling him in and holding him as close as he dares. 

Strawhat goes as easy as anything, taking this as tacit permission to  _ fold  _ into Law, turning so that he’s clutching at Law’s shirt and sobbing into the space just below the hollow of his throat. Together, they sort of slide off the rock, Law ending up with it at his back and Strawhat practically in his lap, twisted in a way that  _ cannot _ be good for his wounds. 

The last time Law was touched so casually was shortly before Cora-san’s death. Despite being desperately out of practice, he thinks he can manage this, at least. 

_ Just this. I can give you just this, right now, because I’d be a monster not to. I can give you this.  _

Law holds him, tight, with both arms, while he sobs. 

_ This and nothing more.  _

* * *

Punk Hazard is cold.

Law thinks, some days, that all his time here has made him cold, too. He thinks the only thing keeping him going in this horrible icy place is his rage.

It keeps him warm. 

Law hates Caesar. Law hates Monet. Law hates Doflamingo and he hates this place and every single day crawls by so, so  _ fucking _ slowly that this plan just doesn’t seem worth it, the longer he stays. 

(But then he remembers why he’s still here at all—why he’s even  _ alive  _ to hate them so much. And he stays.) 

Caesars men catch some intruders and then promptly fucking  _ lose them  _ and it is Law that has to clean up their mess when those same intruders find and try to steal the sick kids Caesar is working with. When Law catches up to them, he recognizes them almost immediately. 

_ Strawhats. _

Law comes up behind them as they’re fleeing when it starts—a sensation like he’s plunged his whole hand into warm water. 

At the end of the group, one of the Strawhats abruptly stops running, doubling over and clasping his chest. Law recognizes him from his bounty poster— _ Blackleg Sanji,  _ the cook. 

“Sanji-kun?!” The navigator cries, but Blackleg is already waving her off. He tosses whatever he was carrying—the head of the Wano Samurai—to Cyborg Franky and turns to face him. 

And  _ fuck,  _ Law is an  _ idiot. _

He had assumed that dumb bounty poster was just brimming with artistic representation, putting it down as nothing but a bad sketch and forgetting all about it but  _ christ— _ he was so fucking stupid. Right there, right on the man’s  _ face, _ spun into his eyebrow is  _ sacred geometry.  _

(Law’s hand is so goddamn  _ warm.) _

“Yo, Law,” Blackleg says, casual as anything. Law… kind of wants to hit him. 

“Blackleg-ya,” Law offers. “What do you think you’re doing?”

Blackleg shrugs a single shoulder, so infuriatingly casual. “They asked for help.” Meaning the kids, Law knows. But Law feels like Blackleg is saying something else entirely. 

Law flexes his hand, still blazing. His  _ nodachi  _ is a comfortable weight at his back. 

“I can’t let you take them,” he tells him. And Blackleg just…  _ smiles.  _

“I can’t let you stop me. Soulmate or not, I’ll kick your ass,” and  _ dear lord  _ was Law not at all prepared for this. It’s a cosmic joke, this. And it continues to be funny for everyone else  _ but  _ him. 

And Blackleg is looking at him with unbearable  _ softness,  _ looking at him like he can see right through him and Law has a fucking  _ job to do,  _ goddamnit. 

“ _ Room,”  _ and it is not an escape, this. 

(But it kind of is).  __

* * *

There is a party after all is said and done. Marines and Strawhats and pirates that Caesar had conned and all, there is a  _ party  _ and Law…  _ cannot.  _

He somehow gets to a small, dark room somewhere aboard the ship where everyone was gathering for food, but Law can’t remember quite how he made it there.

The whole ship is deathly cold—so cold that it seeps through his jacket and chills him to the bone when he presses his back against the wall and slides to the ground. It hits him all at once—the plan he’s set into motion,  _ Vergo _ , his injuries, the  _ cold _ —and Law is  _ lost.  _

The undertow of his own emotions is vicious when it pulls him down. He’s gasping visible clouds of breath into the freezing air, hands shaking where he grips and releases the hilt of his  _ nodachi.  _

_ Breathe, goddamnit,  _ he snaps at himself, heart racing. 

(The dawning realization in Cora-san’s eyes that Vergo was not who he said he was… Law’s  _ own  _ realization—so fucking  _ young  _ and so fucking  _ stupid— _ that he had trusted the  _ wrong _ marine… The audible snap of Cora-san’s ribs under Vergo’s boots while Law had  _ screamed,  _ while Law had  _ begged—)  _

And fuck, Vergo hadn’t even flinched when Law had left him for dead. He had wanted—

He doesn’t quite know what he wanted, but it wasn’t  _ that.  _ Just…  _ nothing.  _

“Fuck,” Law hisses, and again,  _ louder,  _ “ _ Fuck.  _ Fuck!” Because Doflamingo’s people had already arrived. Baby Five and Buffalo, tied up outside and separated into neat, bloodless pieces by his blade and Law is so  _ fucking afraid— _

The numbness of the past two years is lost to him. The freezing cold exterior was just that—an  _ exterior _ —and like Vergo’s still got a vice grip around Law’s own heart, his weakness is leaving him  _ breathless  _ and writhing and he can’t calm down— 

_ Can’t—  _

“Oh shit, Law?” A voice. Law doesn’t know whose. Doesn’t fucking care. Still can’t fucking  _ breathe—  _

Someone crouches down in front of him, but his eyes aren’t processing the information right and he just— 

_ Cannot—  _

(The dreaded return of his own voice as he  _ wailed  _ because he knew,  _ he knew  _ that when it came back, it would mean Cora-san was  _ gone— _ dead and all  _ your fucking fault—)  _

“Breathe, Law, c’mon. It’s alright,” and they’re reaching out, probably to  _ touch him  _ and Law  _ cannot _ . But his muscles are all locked up—all  _ not obeying  _ him—so he just ends up clutching the jacket of the person before him, just  _ hanging on for dear fucking life  _ and he’s clenching his teeth so hard that it  _ hurts _ . 

_ (“You’ll call me ‘sir,’”  _ Vergo had said and Law wishes he had  _ spit  _ on his fucking corpse for how the  _ feeling  _ of those words is still clinging to him like so much fucking  _ filth  _ that he can’t get off—)

“Work with me here, you’re alright.” Hands wrap gently around his wrists, holding but not confining. A feather-light, barely-there touch ghosts over the mark hidden under his right glove and this  _ awful  _ little sound hisses out of him. 

Law’s breath leaves his body in a shuddering exhale that makes his shoulders shake.

“Coming back around?” Those hands are rubbing little circles into the bare skin of his wrists, the motion of it grounding. Steadying. “Yeah, you’re coming back around. It’s alright. Take however long you need.”

Law drops his head to his knees, his legs tucked up to his chest like a child. He rolls his forehead side to side thinking a persistent stream of:  _ fuck this, fuck all of this, get ahold of yourself.  _

“You’re lucky I didn’t send Luffy after you. Shitty rubber has no fuckin’ discretion,” and Law can finally place the voice— _ Blackleg.  _

Whatever remains of Law’s common sense is screaming at him.  _ Do not get attached, you fucking idiot, stop this right now, you have nothing to give these people, nothing at all— _

And Blackleg must feel something shift in the atmosphere because he lets out a dry laugh and says, “Is this the part where you kick my ass?” 

Law lets go of the man’s jacket and scrubs his newly freed hands over his face as hard as he can bear. The sounds of fabric shifting greet him, Blackleg must be moving, and then the smell of food rises to the forefront. 

“Either way, you’re going to eat this. It’ll help.” 

And that’s so fucking absurd that Law has to glare at him and  _ shit— _ he wishes he hadn’t even  _ looked up.  _ Because he’s right there, this person that Law has spent his whole life either anticipating breathlessly, or much later, dreading with a carefully cultivated little crop of apathy, and he’s  _ stupidly fucking beautiful.  _

His hair, even after hours of fighting, looks as soft as anything. There is the barest hint of laugh-lines creased at the sides of his mouth, betraying him as a man that smiles often, and his skin is otherwise entirely flawless. The vaguest scent of nicotine clings to him and Law can’t even drum up the energy to hate it—Cora-san was a smoker and he’s always found the smell of it oddly comforting, even now. Law knows without looking that the blue of the man’s eyes will match the water swirling in stark colors against his hand perfectly. And  _ fuck it all, _ because the universal mathematics of the Beautiful stares him right in the face. 

“Hell,” Law curses, staring. He knows he’s staring. 

_ Spira mirabilis,  _ he thinks as Blackleg quirks that damned eyebrow at him. 

“Yeah, yeah, just eat it,” and there is a bowl of warm soup being pushed into his hands and Law’s options are to take it or scald himself, so he takes it.

(And lord help him, the very first sip is  _ warm.  _ Warm enough to perhaps begin to thaw him from the inside out.) 

* * *

Law has a…  _ complicated _ relationship with food. 

It is not something he enjoys to any particular degree. It is a necessity, sometimes one more pleasant than others, but he views it precisely as favorably as he does the general act of pissing when he needs to piss. He often leaves meals half-finished or skips them altogether, opting for snacks here-and-there when he remembers or gets too dizzy to function and coffee on the occasion when his nightmares chase him up before dawn (or don’t let him rest at all). 

It becomes clear on his very first day aboard the  _ Thousand Sunny  _ that this attitude is not going to fly. 

“Ne, Torao,” Mugiwara says, sidling up to him from across the deck. “Sanji says no one gets to miss a meal.” And there’s that thousand-watt smile. Law feels a prominent vein twitch in his face. 

“I’m not hungry,” Law says. 

Mugiwara just hums, rocking on the balls of his feet and looking confused. “Why not?”

_ It’s like talking to a child.  _

“I’m just not.” 

Roronoa Zoro barks out a laugh, his hand coming to rest on Mugiwara’s shoulder. “That’s not gonna’ matter to the shit cook very much,” he says with a shark-like grin. 

As if on a cue, the door to the ship’s galley bursts open with a pointed  _ thwack  _ and there Blackleg stands, scowling hard enough to curdle milk in a fluffy pink  _ Doskoi  _ brand apron. 

“Oi! Shitheads! I said  _ lunch!”  _ he shouts. 

“Sorry, sorry!” Mugiwara scrambles upright, racing to the kitchen. In the doorway, he pauses just long enough to rock up onto his toes and plant a kiss right on Blackleg’s cheek. 

(Law’s stomach  _ does not  _ swoop). 

Blackleg flushes as pink as his apron and grumbles something under his breath before returning his attention back to Law and Roronoa. His glare is hardly lessened an inch by the stubborn blush decorating his face. 

“Inside,  _ now.  _ That means you too, Law. You’re too fucking skinny.” 

Roronoa just  _ laughs.  _ “You’re one to talk!”

Lunch is delayed an additional fifteen minutes by the ensuing scuffle. Law is forced to steal away to the kitchen, lest he get caught in the crossfire. 

(But he can’t help but notice that _it_ is not the same as what exists between Blackleg and Strawhat. He can't help but notice that the way the swordsman and the cook dance around each other and bicker with each other and just plain-old  _ attack  _ each other is so very  _ different.  _ There is none of the easy, open affection that seems to exist between Strawhat and Roronoa or Strawhat and Blackleg. There is just a heaviness, a notable  _ absence  _ and a whole lot of  _ emotion  _ and Law…)

Law  _ wonders.  _

But then Blackleg is ducking back into the kitchen and laying plate upon plate of food across the table. 

Law braces himself for just another meal—and it’s not that the food isn’t  _ good,  _ it’s just that it’s  _ food  _ and Law is not the kind of person to whom that means very much at all—and he feels his eyes go wide when Blackleg slides a single plate of onigiri in front of Law and Law alone. 

Law  _ stares.  _

“Everyone eats good on this ship and goddammit, you are going to  _ enjoy it,”  _ Blackleg says, but he’s teasing. He flashes Law a fond, playful smile before stealing away, ever the attentive host.

Law waits until Blackleg is out of sight to take a bite. 

It’s startlingly  _ good.  _

* * *

“You and Blackleg-ya are not involved,” he says, approaching Roronoa late that same night. Nico Robin is the only other crew member that is awake and she’s all the way up in the covered crow’s nest on watch. Law trusts that she, above everyone else in this crew, is a woman of discretion. 

“What?” Roronoa sputters, giving Law a  _ look  _ that clearly says  _ why are you asking me this  _ and  _ please stop asking me this  _ at the same time. 

“You and Strawhat-ya are in a romantic relationship, yes? As are Strawhat-ya and Blackleg-ya?” 

Roronoa pushes away from the railing of the ship, crossing his arms at his chest and glaring at Law with his single dark eye. “What’s your point?” 

“Call me curious, is all. You’re both soulmates, correct?” Law pushes, glaring back in equal measure. 

“Well I’m yours, too, and it’s not like we’re not fucking as far as  _ I’m  _ aware.” Law makes a short  _ sound  _ deep in his chest, a growl. (It stings and it  _ shouldn’t.)  _ Roronoa shrugs. “Look, it’s nothing different or special. You don’t want me. Curly-brow doesn’t want me,  _ either.”  _

A cup hits the deck and shatters into three enormous pieces. 

Both men whip around and there, half-caught coming around the corner, is the man in question. 

Blackleg stands there, frozen mid-step with a shattered mug at his feet, his mouth gaping open like a fish. 

“I’m sorry, I’m—Robin wanted tea—I…  _ what?  _ I don’t—you think I don’t  _ want  _ you?” Trips out of his mouth. Law’s heart twists in sympathy (and absolutely nothing else). 

Roronoa looks…  _ confused.  _ Embarrassed. Pink around the cheeks, even in the dark. Law watches as the man scratches absently at the back of his head, glancing off to the side and back again to Law—looking  _ anywhere  _ except at Blackleg. 

“Well, I’m not  _ wrong,  _ alright?” Roronoa gets out. 

(Law really suddenly feels like he very much  _ shouldn’t  _ be here.)

“You’re so fucking  _ stupid— _ how are you  _ this  _ fucking stupid?” Blackleg sputters breathlessly, stalking forward over spilled tea and broken glass. “You think I don’t  _ want  _ you?” His voice  _ cracks  _ rather dangerously and Law shifts away even as his chest  _ aches  _ at the sound. It is as easy as anything to disappear from them as Blackleg’s voice rises. “How could you possibly—?”

Roronoa scoffs. “What else am I supposed to think? You said it didn’t have to mean anything and then your mark… it’s…” 

Blackleg’s voice is  _ cold,  _ so fucking  _ cold  _ and empty when he responds, barely a rasp of a thing that Law has to strain to hear even as he continues to discretely move away.

“I didn’t do that, Zoro. I would  _ never.  _ Fucking— _ hell.”  _

_ This is not for me,  _ Law knows. It doesn’t change the fact that he still catches Blackleg’s last, quiet admission before he finally makes it out of earshot.

“It’s not that I didn’t want you. It’s that I don’t  _ deserve  _ you.” 

The darkness and cover of the Mikan grove at night is so quiet that Law’s heartbeat is practically thunderous in comparison. He crouches in the grass, burying his head in his knees as if he is still small and not twenty six and eighteen-years dead already. 

_ This is not for you. You can’t give anything to them.  _

He traces out the letters of DEATH on his fingers. 

Morbidly, Law wonders if these people—these beautiful people that he could so  _ dangerously  _ see himself loving —will mourn him when he’s gone. 

Dressrosa is only a day away, after all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My inner nerd is showing. The excerpts about the logarithmic spiral came from a book I have, "The Golden Ratio: The Story of Phi, The World's Most Astonishing Number" by Mario Livio. You can find the picture (Figure 37) that Law shows his mother posted on my [tumblr](https://trixree.tumblr.com/post/627258077412016128/the-sun-inscribed) :) 
> 
> Love ya'll

**Author's Note:**

> I intend for this to be a short little multi-chapter fic exploring my favorite quartet of dumb pirate boys  
> Check out the [inspo for Luffy's soulmate mark](https://www.ohmytat.com/products/fake-sun-and-clouds-temporary-tattoo-sticker) (and by that I mean the mark that symbolizes Luffy and is on Zoro's chest) 
> 
> As always, I'm on [tumblr](https://trixree.tumblr.com/)


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